5 September 2020
This week saw flurries of warblers migrating through Pennsylvania and a lot of bug love. The bugs were easy to photograph at Moraine State Park on 31 August.
Above, two insects are frozen in place as they mate on a boneset flower. I don’t know who they are. Do you?
Below, we were astonished to see large reddish galls on staghorn sumac leaves. These are woolly aphids called Melaphis rhois, one of the few whose eggs cause galls.
The galls occur when female aphids lay a single egg on the underside of the sumac leaf, inducing the leaf to form a sac over the egg.
There are so many galls on this sumac that they look like fruit.
It’s also called “red pouch gall.”
My friend Melissa bravely opened a gall which scattered white powder everywhere. Woolly aphids!
Inside the gall we easily saw larvae and a few adults.
How will they overwinter?
More bug love then next year’s galls.
(photos by Kate St. John)
Looks like this might be it: http://bugoftheweek.squarespace.com/blog/2016/8/23/thread-waisted-wasps-really-dig-spotted-horsemint-thread-waisted-wasp-ieremnophila-aureonotatai
Thanks, Laura. Good sleuthing.
Unrelated tidbit: a census of the Saguaro National Park occurs at the same time as US census. Size, number of arms, wildlife.