Ruffner Mountain

Today, Tuesday January 14, 2014, we ventured to Ruffner Mountain. (http://ruffnermountain.org) Here we found many galls and some beetle eggs. We also saw a city overlook and visited a cave made out of limestone rock (See pictures below).

I found two different types of galls. Both were ball galls, but they were found on different plants and were different sizes. The three larger ball galls in the picture above could be a gall of the fruit fly, Eurosta solidaginis. These galls are found on a plant called Goldenrod. There is one fly in each of these galls and sometimes downy woodpeckers and chickadees break open these galls and eat them. There are also some wasps that can get into these galls and eat the inside as well. The inside of these galls are shown in the last picture above. http://bugtracks.wordpress.com/2011/05/01/goldenrod-ball-galls/
This is a really good website talking about the different types of galls. http://http-server.carleton.ca/~kbstorey/insects.htm

The smaller ball gall shown in the first picture is a hackberry gall. I am still trying to figure out more about these and will put the information in my collection paper. But, what I found so far, and I think I am right, but the insects inside these galls were adult hackberry gall psyllids. Another name is "hackberry nipple gall maker". Under magnification, they look like miniature cicadas. Normally, they overwinter under the bark of trees, but psyllids don't distinguish between "good" and "bad" overwintering locations so they also squeeze into cracks and crevices around windows, doors and siding. http://lancaster.unl.edu/pest/resources/hackberrypsyllids.shtml

The lone stick from a Hickory tree in the picture actually has a beetle egg on it. This beetle, commonly called the long horned beetle, lays their eggs on the branch of a Hickory tree and chews on the branch just enough to let the branch hang from the tree, soon to fall. The eggs hatch in about three weeks and the larvae eat on the branch. In late summer, the larvae pupate and two weeks later emerge as adults. Twig girdler is in the insect order Coleoptera (beetles), the family Cerambycidae (longhorned beetles) and the species is Oncideres cingulata.