General Intro Info
Thanks to the work of @kimberlietx & @megachile many of these galls have been found and put on iNaturalist and they have been confirmed to be caused by seemingly undescribed gall mites. Here is a great example of what this species looks like when cut open with lots of detail and commentary:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/61068804
And here is a webpage dedicated to the species on GallFormers.org :
Comments
@kimberlietx & @megachile as I've done with similar species before (Diospyros texana (Texas persimmon) Galls) before, I made this into a project to group them together in a more permanent way than just by "similar observation set" (because anyone is capable of changing that at anytime). This also allows us to observe the current known range of the species. If either of you would like to be added as admins to this project, just let me know!
I'm happy being just a member unless a need arises otherwise. (I'm struggling to keep up with all my mini-projects as it is, so I don't want to bottleneck anything!) I may be overstepping @megachile here, but you should consider being a contributor to the gallformers.org website. We could use help updating what we DO know about the mysterious galls.
Yes we need as many contributors as we can get! If you want to join I'll send you the invite link to our Slack channel
I'd love to @megachile , seems like my favorite new hobby is finding plant associations like galls! I would really like to streamline getting this one and the Texas persimmon gall mite species identified or (better yet) named as a new species!
Yeah, we went through that excitement of wanting to get them IDed. The problem lies in finding someone in the field that wants to do it, too. I gave up and went back to just finding more galls and documenting what I could. Here's the beast that got me started: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/1931782
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