Gall Week is officially over!
Thanks everyone for joining our project and helping out documenting galls! Our period of documenting galls is now over, however you can upload all observations documented between 4/15-23.
Thanks everyone for joining our project and helping out documenting galls! Our period of documenting galls is now over, however you can upload all observations documented between 4/15-23.
Comments
Thank you! Enjoyed getting out and doing a push for those spring galls!
Thanks! This was fun! I bet Ronald Russo would be blown away by how many people are into galls now.
Thank you @merav for organizing this event, and also a special shout-out to those who have worked hard to make it possible @megachile @naturesarchive @nancyasquith @tepary @chyroptera @graysquirrel @sk53 (I’m sure I missed tagging a lot more so apologize in advance), and everyone who participated/contributed!
I’ve learned so much from this Gall Week (maybe more so than past Gall Weeks) so I hope many other people did as well. Although this project is now over, Spring 2023 gall season goes on all over the world so please continue documenting and identifying them in your local favorite gall projects!
Thanks for the shout out, but I can't say I did much at all this round aside from the podcast episode and an embarrassingly small number of IDs and annotations.
@naturesarchive Your podcast was wonderful!
Just in case anyone missed it, highly recommended: https://podcast.naturesarchive.com/2023/04/10/spring-galls/
yes, @norikonbu - I also wanted to thank so many people who helped with this project, either organizing, identifying, spreading the word, and reaching out to others, inviting them to join the project.
I was planning on doing more on all these categories myself, but ended up having a very busy week. I still need to upload most of my observations from the week. Even this message was written from my phone, so I wasn't able to tag people. I was on a trip the past few days, and found a whole range of galls I didn't find last week, including galls I've never seen before...
And this weekend it's City Nature Challenge - I'm planning on documenting many more galls for that...
@merav Still, thanks again for organizing this event during such a busy time! Yes, this spring is also proven to be a busy time for us all, and I think that's a good thing :)
it's a great thing - there's so much to see (and document)!
I still have to catch up on a couple of diaries. Unfortunately I was unable to get any finds in the final weekend: too many other activities.
@merav I can't remember, were we supposed to put parasitoids in the project? What about other creatures living in the gall that are not parasitoids (nor the gall maker) like this guy: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/157794992
@lappelbaum She looks to be a commensal rather than an inquiline or predator: perhaps we need suitable observation fields for those. Some cynipid galls can have 40-50 other organisms in their associated community. Aphid galls can have specialised predators, such as Heringia hoverflies which feed on Pemphigius and Eriosoma aphids.
@sk53 I added the gall maker as host because the description included commensal symbiont: "Species that is hosting this parasite or mutual/commensal symbiont." I'm not really familiar with the term inquiline. I found this definition: "In zoology, an inquiline is an animal that lives commensally in the nest, burrow, or dwelling place of an animal of another species." Even though I was pretty sure I knew what commensalism was, I decided to look it up: "Commensalism is a long-term biological interaction (symbiosis) in which members of one species gain benefits while those of the other species neither benefit nor are harmed." So it sounds like an inqulinism is a subtype of commensalism. If you are suggesting the larva is not an inquiline because it's not in a long-term relationship with the gall former, then wouldn't it also not be commensalism?
@lappelbaum: in my experience inquiline is used for organisms which have a near obligate relationship with the gall causer (a nice example in Europe is the gall midge Parallelodiplosis galliperda (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/135105532) which requires galls of Neuroterus quercusbaccarum, (which it distorts) because it lives underneath them. Other larger galls may just be used by other invertebrates just because they are a convenient shelter, and these may be found in other non-gall locations as well.
"Inquiline: a mite or insect that lives in and feeds on the tissues of the gall caused by another species, and which may distort the gall." (Redfern et al. 2011).
I don't think the caterpillar fits that definition, but it is definitely making use of the gall, so possibly exhibits some degree of commensalism.
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