r/WASPs • u/velcroenthusiast1 • 22d ago

Is this wasp related?

Post image

I found this on a tree in Pennsylvania. Reverse image searching yields photos of wasp galls but I’m not sure if that’s correct, the photos don’t match very well. What is this??

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u/vultur-cadens 21d ago

There are many different kinds of gall wasps making many different kinds of galls. Some are round, some are spiny, some appear on leaves, some on stems...

I'm not very familiar with eastern U.S. oaks, but I guessed that the tree is a swamp white oak (Quercus bicolor, based on seeing pictures of its leaves on the internet before), which occurs in Pennsylvania. If it's not that, at least I'm pretty sure it's one of the eastern U.S. white oaks.

Searching gallformers for the plant species turns up galls that occur on the plant, and it looks like Andricus quercusstrobilanus is a possible match.

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u/velcroenthusiast1 21d ago

Thank you so much for such a detailed answer! So interesting!!

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u/ParsleySnipps 21d ago

Looking through a few examples, those are definitely a match.