Atrusca spadix (agamic)

Family: Cynipidae | Genus: Atrusca
Detachable: detachable
Color: pink, red, yellow, tan
Texture: pubescent, glaucous, hairy, hairless
Abundance:
Shape: globular, spindle
Season: Fall, Winter
Related:
Alignment:
Walls: thin, radiating-fibers
Location: lower leaf, leaf midrib
Form: oak apple
Cells: monothalamous
Possible Range:i
Common Name(s):
Synonymy:
Pending...

Origin of higher categories in Cynips
“

Cynips (dugèsi) spadix, new species
agamic form

GALL.-Similar to all galls of the C. bella and C. dugèsi complexes. Mature galls yellow to light rosy tan, unspotted, usually shining, sometimes puberulent or even powdered; large to very large, up to 32. mm., averaging near 22. mm. in diameter. Figure 54.

HOST.-Quercus macrophylla. Not on Q. nudinervis in the same area.

RANGE.-Guerrero: Taxco, 8 NE, 8000' (types). Chilpancingo, 6 S, 4000'. Tierra Colorada, 14 N, 3200'. Probably restricted to Quercus macrophylla in a southwestern portion of Mexico, involving most of the state of Guerrero. Figure 18

LIFE HISTORY..—Adult: January 20. February 1, 10. March 10.

Spadix is known to extend from the northern boundary of Guerrero to the southwestern limit of oak, not 25 miles from the Pacific Coast, on the road from Mexico City to Acapulco. The galls of spadix are more or less distinctive in a complex of mostly uniform galls. They are light yellow tan and in some cases very large in size and pruinose in surface. The material from our most southern locality, Tierra Colorada in Guerrero, includes more large and distinctly pruinose specimens than the material from the type locality (Taxco, in northeastern Guerrero); but the insects from these two collections appear identical, and we credit the differences in the two lots of galls to the fact that one is a larger and more inclusive series.

Near Taxco, Quercus macrophylla and Q. nudinervis may be found growing together. Spadix is confined to macrophylla. On Q. nudinervis the conspicuously spotted galls of C. conexa represent the same complex. See conexa for the distinctions between the two.

In Morelos there is another insect, C. spinalis, which matches spadix in color, but it matches spinifera in its long spine, smooth mesopleuron, and light olive tan galls.

”

- Alfred Kinsey: (1936) Origin of higher categories in CynipsŠ


Further Information:
Pending...

See Also:
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