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Photo#1529202
Chamise Gall Insects - Liposcelis

Chamise Gall Insects - Liposcelis
Lake Murray, San Diego County, California, USA
May 28, 2018
There was a large patch of chamise that was covered with these small galls. Most of a bush would be covered. When I cut a gall open, several insects spilled out.

All the insects have one or two dark spots -- usually at the rear. I'm wondering if this is accumulated waste that the insect would dump all at once after it exited the gall. Anybody know?

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Chamise Gall Insects - Liposcelis Chamise Gall Insects - Liposcelis Chamise Gall Insects - Liposcelis Chamise Gall Insects - Liposcelis Chamise Gall Insects - Liposcelis Chamise Gall Insects - Liposcelis

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The only way to ID these to species..
is first, to preserve some in ethanol and second, to get an expert to agree to attempt an identification. Any chance you preserved some specimens of this one?

 
Specimens
I didn't preserve any, but I've still got some live ones and there's about a million more where those came from. There are a lot of galls on those plants.

 
Not galls
The structures that look like galls are the waxy outer shells of wax scales, possibly barnacle scales [see https://bugguide.net/node/view/5941]. Scale shells sometimes have exit holes from parasitic wasps that could have allowed the Liposcelis to crawl into the vacated wax shell. Hey, does anyone know whether Liposcelis are likely to lay eggs on scale larvae or break into scales insects' wax shells?

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Moved from ID Request.

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