Gall-wasps and Parasitoid wasps - Cynipoidea

All images on this website have been taken in Leicestershire and Rutland by NatureSpot members. We welcome new contributions - just register and use the Submit Records form to post your photos. Click on any image below to visit the species page. The RED / AMBER / GREEN dots indicate how easy it is to identify the species - see our Identification Difficulty page for more information. A coloured rating followed by an exclamation mark denotes that different ID difficulties apply to either males and females or to the larvae - see the species page for more detail.

Bees, Wasps, Ants

Bees, wasps, ants and sawflies are all part of the insect order Hymenoptera.  A typical hymenopteran has 2 pairs of wings which are coupled together with tiny hooks.  Bees, wasps and ants are in the sub-Order Apocrita, with a definite waist between the thorax and abdomen. 

We have placed Sawflies in a separate gallery because they are in the sub-order Symphyta, and considered to be more primitive than other groups of the Hymenoptera. They are very different to bees, wasps and ants - one distinctive feature is that they don't have a waist. 

Whilst everyone is familiar with the social bumblebees and honeybees, these represent only about 10% of all the British bee species. The remainder are solitary bees that don't work together as a single colony to rear their young. 

There is an even greater diversity of wasps. As with the bees, there are a few social wasps that everyone is familiar with, but these represent just a small fraction of all UK wasps. Sand-wasps, Digger-wasps, Mason wasps and Potter wasps and many other species all have solitary life cycles.

Many wasps are parasitoids, attacking the immature stages of other insects and eventually killing their hosts. (A parasite lives within the host, but doesn't kill it).  Examples are Chalcids, Ichneumons and Braconids.  These are generally under-recorded species, and identification often requires the help of an expert in the group.

Ants are all social insects living in large colonies that work collaboratively.  Identification can be difficult, and several are under-recorded in our area.  Gavin Gamble has written some notes on Ant Recording and Identification to guide recorders. 

Many members of this group are difficult or impossible to identify from field images. Make sure that your images include the diagnostic features needed to make a definitive identification or get a recognised expert to confirm the identification.

Identification help

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Gall-wasps and Parasitoid wasps - Cynipoidea

Cynipidae - Gall wasps

Nearly all wasp galls in the UK are caused by wasps in the family Cynipidae, and most are on Oak, with a few on Rose and a few on other herbaceous species.   Life-cycles increase in complexity from the galls on Bramble (Diastrophus) and herbaceous species (e.g. Aulacidea, Phanacis, Liposthenes), to more complex Diplolepis, which gall roses, to the Oak gall wasps (e.g. Andricus, Cynips, Neuroterus) with the most complex life-cycles.

Oak cynipid wasps have alternating sexual/asexual generations, or ‘cyclical parthenogenesis’.  Typically, the gall formed by the females of the sexual generation appears in spring/early summer, and is on a different part of the oak to the later asexual (or agamic) generation.  In many species, the sexual galls are recorded less often than the asexual galls, which are often larger and persist longer. (An example of an exception to this is the oak-apple, Biorhiza pallida, which is the sexual gall).   Often the 2 types of gall are a very different shape, and originally some were thought to be different species; in some species, the sexual gall has not been found.  Some introduced species form sexual galls on the non-native Turkey oak and asexual galls on native oaks – e.g. Andricus kollari.  

The first generation sexual gall is produced in spring by an asexual female that lays eggs parthenogenetically, without them being fertilised by a male.  The females are of two kinds; those that lay eggs which produce male wasps, and those that produce females. From this gall, the second generation of sexual wasps emerges, both male and female; these mate, and the females then produce the asexual galls later in the year.