Favoritos de tepary

1 female emerged from one of these galls on tanoak:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/195401835

Collected: 12-27-2023
Emerged: 01-25-2024

(Last 3 photos were taken on Dec 30 when the gall was still fresh)

From galls on willow collected 1 Sept 2021. Placed in refrigerator until mid February 2022. Discovered this fly had emerged 17 March 2022. The vials were fairly humid so the adult flies are in poor shape, quite soft and deteriorate easily when I try to pick them up. I moved them to alcohol to hopefully stop the deterioration.

Example leaf gall from same willow bush: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/93307708

Oligotrophus betheli galls, per Russo's Plant Galls of the Western United States (2021) p. 80 and Gallformers.org https://www.gallformers.org/gall/1750

On Juniperus occidentalis (Western Juniper)

Egg cases of unidentified insect? At first I thought these were galls (because that's what I was looking for), but on closer inspection I noticed the lids—some open, some closed—and one insect that was trapped while emerging. These were found on stems of rubber rabbitbrush (Ericameria nauseosa) near and with, but perhaps unrelated to many larger galls of "Cotton gall tephritid" (Aciurina bigeloviae) (see https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/61430574). In and around a dry wash channel on the alluvial fan 0.4 road mile northwest of the park entrance at Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park, Ione Valley/ Shoshone Mountains, Nye County, Nevada, elev. 6480 ft.

Two-lobed adult at the 1, 2, and 3 year old nodes of Englemann spruce. Also saw these at Philips Ridge yesterday. Grainy white liquid when burst. Quite sweet tasting and appears to be covered in sweet syrupy honeydew not pitch. Tops of the spruces appear more afflicted and color is off.

I went with this species instead of hemicryptus because my forest insects manual acknowledges this one in the west and not the other. Not certain though.

Conical bud gall on Gutierrezia sarothrae. Gall composed of deformed leaves stuck together, and surrounded at the base by a small rosette of leaflets. Superfically similar to galls of Rhopalomyia gutierreziae but I believe this is something different. Collected for rearing.