Globular Rose Gall Wasp – Diplolepsis globuloides

Globular Rose Gall Wasp (Diplolepsis globuloides)

Latin Name: Diplolepsis globuloides

Common Name: Globular Rose Gall Wasp

Appearance: 

• The female is around 4 mm (0.16 in) in length.
• The color of the abdomen and legs is yellow-red, whereas the rest of the body is black.
• The male is dark in color and lacks the hypopygium feature that distinguishes the species in females.
• It has yellow bicolor legs and a body length of roughly 3 mm (0.12 in)

Hosts plants: Rose bedeguar gall, Robin’s pincushion, mossy rose gall, or simply moss gall

Territory:

Globular Rose Gall Wasps are found throughout the United States, predominantly North America.

Damages caused by Leaf chewers:

Insect chewing damage to plants can take numerous forms. Foliage or flowers may vanish when certain insects eat them. Occasionally, the plant will appear ragged and, upon closer inspection, will reveal bitten edges or cores. Plants can be cut at the root and topple over, or twigs can be girdled and die as a result. Mining or boring is the process of causing harm to a plant through chewing. Only the upper or lower surfaces are sometimes destroyed, producing a brown, burned look or skeletonization (openings between the veins).

Life History and Habits: 

The insect spends the winter as a larva in the gall, and the adult wasp grows and chews its way out in the early spring. Using her ovipositor, the female wasp lays up to 60 eggs in each leaf bud. The grubs develop inside the gall, and the wasps emerge in the spring; the wasp is parthenogenetic, with males accounting for less than 1% of the population. It looks for expanding leaf tissue to lay eggs on. The eggs hatch and the larvae feeding promote the gall to grow around it. Every year, a new generation is born.