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Species Acraspis erinacei - Hedgehog Gall Wasp

Gall on White Oak Leaf - Acraspis erinacei Hedgehog Gall on White Oak - Acraspis erinacei Acraspis? on white oak - Acraspis erinacei Acraspis erinacei? - Acraspis erinacei colorful gall on bur oak leaf - Acraspis erinacei Gall on Oak - Acraspis erinacei? - Acraspis erinacei Hedgehog Gall Wasp? - Acraspis erinacei Cynipidae, Hedgehog Gall Wasp, galls on underside of Oak leaf - Acraspis erinacei
Classification
Kingdom Animalia (Animals)
Phylum Arthropoda (Arthropods)
Subphylum Hexapoda (Hexapods)
Class Insecta (Insects)
Order Hymenoptera (Ants, Bees, Wasps and Sawflies)
No Taxon ("Parasitica" - Parasitoid Wasps)
Superfamily Cynipoidea
Family Cynipidae (Gall Wasps)
Tribe Cynipini (Oak Gall Wasps)
Genus Acraspis
Species erinacei (Hedgehog Gall Wasp)
Synonyms and other taxonomic changes
Philonix erinacei Beutenmueller, 1909
Acraspis erinacei
Remarks
Forms galls on white oak (Quercus alba). The sexual generation forms galls on the buds, and the agamic generation forms the distinctive "hedgehog" galls (ellipsoid, up to 13 mm in diameter, covered with red hairs, with 3-5 larval cells inside) on leaves. Females emerge from the leaf galls in the fall (October-December) and crawl to the buds to oviposit. The resulting gall is a thin-walled blister on the inner face of a bud scale, appearing as the buds start to open in the spring. (1)
There is a bi-sexual form, A. bicolens, that forms seed-like, egg-shaped galls in buds on Quercus alba with adults emerging in May.(2)
Works Cited
1.Cynipid Galls of the Eastern United States
Lewis H. Weld. 1959. Privately printed in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
2.Plant Galls and Gall Makers
Ephraim Porter Felt. 1940. Comstock Publishing Company, Inc., Ithaca NY.