Subject: What is this egg sack from?
Geographic location of the bug: Decatur, IN
Date: 11/27/2017
Time: 06:32 AM EDT
My grandson and I found this at the bus stop this morning and would like to know what it is and what we should do with it.
How you want your letter signed: Adventurous G-ma
Dear Adventurous G-ma,
This is not an egg sack. It is an Oak Apple Gall, and it was formed when a Gall Wasp lays an egg on an oak leaf, causing a growth that serves as food for the developing Gall Wasp larva. Galls do not harm the tree. Similar images can be found on Buckeye Yard & Garden Online and Missouri Botanical Garden. Interestingly, Alfred Kinsey, the famous entomologist, studied Gall Wasps before he turned his scientific methods to humans which resulted in the famous (and infamous) Kinsey Reports. Kinsey founded the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University and his reports resulted in the publication of the groundbreaking “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” in 1948 and “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female” in 1953. They were best selling books that changed the way America and the world think about human sexual behavior.
So…are there wasp larvae in it or is it empty?
We suspect it is empty.