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Photo#872842
Panic grass, Cecidomyiidae, adult lateral - female

Panic grass, Cecidomyiidae, adult lateral - Female
Weaver Dunes, Wabasha County, Minnesota, USA
July 3, 2013
Size: 2.0 mm
Hard to measure as adult is curved.

Images of this individual: tag all
Panic grass, Cecidomyiidae, spent pupa Panic grass, Cecidomyiidae, spent pupaX Panic grass, Cecidomyiidae, adult lateral - female Panic grass, Cecidomyiidae, adult lateralX - female Panic grass, Cecidomyiidae, dorsal - female Panic grass, Cecidomyiidae, frontal - female Panic grass, Cecidomyiidae, tip of the ovipositor - female

Moved

Chilophaga virgati
I am not convinced all your photos show the same species, but the combination of (Laseriopterini or Alycaulini), bred from Poaceae, bred from Midwestern Panicum in particular, and color pattern strongly suggest this species for the adults.

 
I agree.
But do you think that the 3 leaf mining larvae, the white spent puparium, and the adult are gall midges? They may or may not be connected.

The other puparia and the wasps, well, I can't make any connections except to the original grass. The wasps (not yet posted) can't be connected to which flies except that one of the brown "typical" pupariums did have an emergence hole that a parasitoid would make.

 
Pupa vs. puparium
The white spent pupa belongs to the midge. A puparium (like the agromyzid's) is a pupa covered with the dried, hardened skin of the larva. Puparium formation is typical of "higher" flies (the ones that look more or less like house flies); very few "Nematocera" form puparia. As it happens, a few grass gall midges do form puparia, but this isn't one of them.

The wasps, assuming they came from the agromyzid puparium with the exit hole, are likely to be either eulophids or braconids, or maybe eucoiline figitids--it will be easy to tell which once you post the photos.

 
Hi Charley,
I was on the road today and thinking about this entire posting, the two different flies that were in the rearing container, and the wasps. I thought about unlinking and separating them but after the input from you all, I think it might be OK to keep them linked now that they are separated.

I'll post the wasps on this link and let you all try to make sense of it.

I have some past rearings that were this convoluted due to (unbeknownst to me) multiple species in the rearing container. I've just not figured out how to tease them apart.

Thanks to EVERYONE for working on this and making some sense of it.
I really appreciate it.

 
You're not alone
Here's a similar situation I was just wrestling with:

 
Thanks.
I needed that.

Moved
Moved from Flies.

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