Pinyon Stunt Needlegall Midge – Janetiella sp.

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Pinyon Stunt Needlegall Midge (Janetiella sp.)

Latin Name: (Janetiella sp.)

Common Name: Pinyon Stunt Needlegall Midge

Appearance:

  • Adults are little orange flies that are about 1/16 inch long.
  • Larvae are little orange legless maggots that grow around 1/16 inch long when fully grown. The eggs are pretty little, spindle-shaped, and orange.
  • The gall is a swollen base of a needle with two compartments roughly 1/3 the length of a typical needle.

Hosts plants:

Pinyon

Damage insect caused by ( Janetiella sp.)

The needles of infested plants become severely stunted. Shortened needles fall early the following spring, producing severe defoliation in heavy infestations. Trees that have been damaged are weaker and vulnerable to diseases and other insect pests. This gall is a concern in pinyon landscape plantings, although it’s not as prevalent or as dangerous as those caused by the spindle all midges.

Description of Sap Suckers:

Sapsuckers are a species of woodpecker found in North America. Sapsucker wells are immediately identifiable. With its chisel-like beak, the bird drills a dozen or more tiny holes in a horizontal line, each less than half an inch apart. Then it returns to suck up the sap that has trickled out again. The bird produces the second row of holes slightly above the first when the flow begins to wane, generally after a few days. A sapsucker at work is identified by a rectangular pattern of nicely spaced holes in tree bark. The yellow-bellied sapsucker is the most common. It lives in Canada’s and Alaska’s frigid evergreen woods. It migrates east of the Rockies and spends the winter in the Southeast United States.

Life history and habitat:

The larvae of the pinyon stunt gall midge overwinter in galls formed by the pinyon stunt gall midge. W.S. Cranshaw captured this image. In early May, the gall and pupate. In late May and early June, adults emerge, mate, and deposit eggs. Early in June, the eggs hatch, and the tiny larvae go to the base of the needles to begin eating and producing galls. Each year, one generation is created.