Page:The Gall Wasp Genus Cynips.pdf/119

 At 1°C insects were still lethargic

At 2-3 °C insects moved a leg or antenna

At 5°C insects moved their bodies slowly

At 7°C insects moved more easily

At 10°C insects moved normally

Paszlavszky seemed to find that the insects from Q. pedunculata were more sensitive to low temperatures, becoming inactive and perishing sooner than those from Q. sessiliflora. This is a striking conclusion too important to accept without confirmation, for if it is true it suggests that the insects from these two, very closely related oaks are at least physiologically different and do not represent the same variety at all.

The records for the emergence of folii in the following spring or even later seem to me exceedingly doubtful. Fonscolombe (1832 acc. Cotte 1912) recorded an emergence for May 31, but Cotte confirms our common experience that the winter galls are empty, and I question whether the older author was making the same mistake that so many of the earlier workers clearly made in confusing gall makers and inquilines from the galls. Darboux and Houard's record (1901) for emergence delayed until the second winter finds no substantiation in precise data.

Over eighty years ago, before the alternation of cynipid generations was suspected, Hartig (1843) instituted the search for the missing male of folii by breeding between three and four thousand insects within a period of eight years. All of these insects, of course, proved to be females, but it was at that time that Hartig received an insect which Ratzeburg had taken to be the male of folii. Hartig showed this to be the male of an inquiline cynipid.

The agamic female contains 80 to 100 eggs (see fig. 91), each of which is nearly spherical and very large (acc. Kieffer 1901:15), the spherical body terminating in a short pedicel which is about 2¼ times as long as the rest of the egg. The female usually oviposits in the small, adventitious buds on the trunks of the older oak trees, or less often on the younger stems of the trees, as Adler first determined in Germany in 1877 and as Beyerinck later confirmed for Holland (1883). Adler's first work was done out-of-doors, and the results were confused by an infestation of the same buds by a totally different cynipid which led Adler at first to report (1877)