The parasitic gall was not able to get out much. For the majority of their year-long lives, these tiny insects are entombed in crypts on the leaves, flowers, and stems of oak trees.
There is no time to waste when spring rolls around. The wasp have a few days to mate and lay their eggs.
The scientists who study these insects must wait for most of the year. They too must use magnifying glasses.
There are more than 1,000 identified species of gall was around the world, and thanks to the extreme hermitism and short lifespan of the creatures, we are still finding more.
It wasn't easy to describe this new species. Even though the wasp was found in their backyard, it took researchers at Rice University four years to describe it.
The wasp was first spotted byPedro Brand in the oak tree outside the university pub.
There is a new species of wasp. Miles Zhang is from the Smithsonian NMNH.
The lead author of the paper was looking for another wasp species that lived in that tree. Some of the wasp's legs looked a little different than they should be.
Either the wasp was a new species or it was an alternating generation of an already known one.
Each generation of the wasp alternates between sexual and asexual reproduction.
Sexual male and female offspring are produced when a female wasp lays her eggs. Eggs of asexual females are only laid when those offspring reproduce.
The wasp's reproductive cycle makes it hard to track over the course of several generations.
Researchers needed to find both generations to determine if the was with lighter colored legs were a new species or an alternating generation of a known species.
The first generation of N. valhalla was found on the oak tree. The tree develops the galls when the insects are just eggs.
When the adult wasp emerge in March, there are no more flowers for them to lay their eggs on. But where?
The missing generation of N. valhalla was found in one of the two different species that emerged from crypts near the oak tree.
The researchers at Rice collected the catkins from the oak tree and placed them in a petri dish in the lab.
After a few weeks, the wasps emerged from their crypts and began laying their eggs on the nearby stem cells.
The life cycle seen in the lab was confirmed by examining live oak trees in Austin, Texas, where no males could be found.
The life cycle of a person. The illustration was created by Barbara Rossi.
There is a chance that the N. valhalla will struggle to survive in a climate crisis because they have just two days to explore the world outside.
Despite the minute size of its galls, N.valhalla appears to number in the tens of millions every year when it emerges from it as an adult, making it an example of overlooked and un described biological diversity found in the center of a well known urban center.
What happens if all that diversity disappears? No one knows.
The oak tree that the gall wasp lives in is only one of many parasites that eat it.
If the wasp goes missing, there will be domino effects.
A single oak tree at Rice University could host over 100 species on its own. Many gall was only identified by one generation.
A lot of information is missing.
The study was published in Systematic Entomology.
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