If you spend enough time looking at and working with plants, you’ll inevitably come across galls. Galls are abnormal growths and can be caused by a variety of different organisms, including insects ...

Crypt-keeper larvae then burrow into the gall wasp hatchlings. A host gall wasp matures and begins to chew its way out of the gall as it normally would, but then, as observed by researchers from ...

Though hollow galls appear deceptively barren, they harbor a dozen or so gall wasp larvae plus a zoo of parasites, hyperparasites, and inquilines. The latter group of insects specializes in eating ...

The galls serve as an ideal environment for wasp larvae, whether it is a single offspring, or dozens. Much research has been done to determine the exact nature and causes of species-specific gall ...

They are gall wasps due to their amazing ability to “chemically manipulate the plant tissues to form galls, plant growths that provide both protection and food for cynipid larvae. There are nearly 800 ...

Eventually these tiny galls drop from the leaves. Each gall contains a tiny active wasp larva inside. Once on the ground they can be seen moving rapidly and hopping an inch or more high, quite an ...

Mites, nematodes, bacteria, fungi or viruses can initiate gall formation, but insects are mostly to blame. When a female insect lays an egg inside plant tissue and the larva emerges from that egg ...

The galls fall to the ground once the wasp larvae are mature. The movement that you describe is the larva inside the gall moving and making the gall jump around on the ground.

Karma exists, at least for gall wasps. These little bugs deposit their larvae in trees so their young can leech off of the plant’s nutrients.

These follow a similar lifestyle as the two-horned oak gall wasp, but they’re colonial, with dozens of wasp larvae sharing a single gall, and they’re laid in branch tissue, not leaves.

Galls are abnormal, tumor-like growths on oak trees created by gall wasps as a shelter for their larvae. Once the gall wasp larvae become adults, they eat their way out of the gall and fly away.