Feron rucklei Melika, Nicholls & Stone, sp. nov.

Gall. (Figs 322–323). Small spangle leaf gall, 5 mm across, somewhat star-shaped, flat against the leaf surface but with a central bump. Pale yellow with a darker centre when growing, becoming tan when mature. Typically multiple galls scattered across a single leaf. The same gall is depicted and described as an unknown species in Russo (2006, 2021; informally called the disk gall wasp) and Weld (1957, Fig. 174).

Biology. Only the asexual generation is known, which induces spangle leaf galls on Q. garryana (section Quercus, subsection Dumosae). Galls mature in November; adults emerge soon after under laboratory conditions. This gall appears to be depicted in Evans (1972) in his Figure 15; those galls were also collected from Q. garryana in the same area (southern Vancouver Island). Evans experimentally matched these asexual galls with the sexual generation of Liodora dumosae, but mistakenly called them A. pattersonae (which has been matched to a different sexual form, A. pedicellatus, using DNA evidence elsewhere in this study). Hence we hypothesise that F. rucklei may be the alternate asexual form of F. dumosae, but further DNA evidence is required to test this suggestion.

Distribution. Canada, British Columbia, Ruckle Provincial Park. It is the first record of this genus for Canada.

- Victor Cuesta-Porta, George Melika, James, A. Nicholls, Graham N. Stone, Juli Pujade-Villar: (2023) Re-establishment of the Nearctic oak cynipid gall wasp genus Feron Kinsey, 1937 (Hymenoptera: Cynipidae: Cynipini), including the description of six new species^©