A newly published paper on 22 new species of gall wasp may not be something you’d ever consider as having any connection to Native American culture. Most people have seen a gall before. A strange growth on a plant that makes the stem bumpy or puffed up. Sometimes little furry balls on leaves or they can even look like a bunch of tiny seeds that are embedded in the leaves. Though not all of these growths are caused by insects, many types serve as nursery space for tiny insect children! An insect will lay their eggs inside the plant and the plant will form the protective gall around the eggs. While all of this is kind of interesting, what does this have to do with indigenous culture? One of these 22 new wasps has been named for a figure in Lakota stories could even be found here on Hatteras Island! We’d like to introduce Ceroptres iktomii, one of the newly discovered tiny wasps that was named in honor of Iktomi!
But why name a wasp after a Spider Trickster from Lakota stories? Where do you find them? How does a wasp researcher know Iktomi? To find out the answers to these questions we went straight to the source, Louis Nastasi from Penn State University, one of the hymenopterists (person who studies wasps) to have discovered and named some of these incredible creatures. This one is going to be a bit of a longer read but we hope you’ll stick around!
How did you relate Tricksters to these new wasps?
Well, here’s where things get interesting. This group of wasps, the Ceroptres, are what we call inquiline. You probably know other inquiline animals…the cuckoo bird and the cow bird! Animals that take over the nesting space of another species. With our wasps, this means they’re not able to make a plant form a gall all by themselves anymore. These wasps have to take over another gall made by another insect to survive. Our little Ceroptres ladies let another wasp lay their eggs and waits for the plant to start forming a gall…then patient Ceroptres girls swoops in and lay their eggs right inside where her babies will take over!
Knowing that information, you might see why a Trickster would be a perfect fit! In fact, with a list of potentially 200 or more new species of gall wasps Louis and other hymenopterists are studying, they compiled a MASSIVE list of thieves, pirates, tricksters, and the like from cultural stories and pop culture! Within the 22 that are currently listed, we’ve got C. anansii that references Anansi, the spider trickster from Ghana. We’ve also got C. jarethi from the fae-like Jareth out of the movie Labyrinth and C. lokii for Loki the well known trickster of Norse stories.
They tried, when they could, to even link the name to something about the wasp. The red C. promethei is a nod to the red of the fire Prometheus stole from the Greek gods. Jabba the Hutt’s namesake, C. jabbai, has the most varied list of host galls for any known species so far to suits the large appearance of the Star Wars villain.
Why Iktomi, the Spider Trickster?
Coming up with a list of 200 names that aren’t already in use is challenging! Add a theme to those names? And you’ve just leveled up the challenge level. But that’s not the only reason of course, Louis actually had personal reasons for wanting to include Iktomi!
His first introduction to Iktomi was from the popular TV show “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”, where they discussed Iktomi in the plot. Louis later became enthralled during a class in 2022 taught by a mentor. This class was all about spiders, from evolution and biology to the impact they’ve had in different cultures. Hearing that the Lakota people had so many positive stories that circled around a spider was something that stuck with him. Though he is a hymenopterist that specializes in gall wasps, Iktomi became cemented in his heart as in important figure. A list of names for wasps with a trickster vibe was the perfect place to show his appreciation!
Why special about the C. iktomii?
If you look back at the first image back at the top of the page, that black bar is to denote measurement so other researchers looking at them can get a clear idea of what they’re looking at. That bar…is ONLY A SINGLE MILLIMETER!!! Our C. iktomii is just over half a millimeter and one of the smallest, if not THE smallest Ceroptres! Forget standing on the head of a pin, a wasp that size could probably thread your beading needle for you!
The other thing that makes them unique is on their teeny tiny antenna. The segments that make up most of the antenna are called flagellomeres (which is just a fun word to say…fla-gel-o-mere….). In this species, the flagellomere at the very tip of the antenna is longer than the second. While that may not seem like a big deal, almost all the other Ceroptres have a very small flagellomere at the antenna tip! The only other one with antenna like this is all the way from Mexico!
Where do you find C. iktomii?
The newly discovered C. iktomii can be found in the United States everywhere east of Idaho and Arizona! They will take over only two very specific types of galls, both of them made by other wasps.
The first is a type of wooly gall found on Bur Oaks and made by a wasp by the name of Druon ignotum. (top two images on the right)
The second is also found on Bur Oaks and is made by a different wasp named Neuroterus saltarius. (bottom two images on the right)
So if you have Bur Oaks in your area, look for galls that look like the images on the right! You could have a little trickster wasp that’s been hiding for decades, previously unseen, right in your backyard!
Gall images from https://www.gallformers.org/
Any last words of wisdom?
Galls are a splendid way to highlight how wonderfully complex nature is. Specialist insects that will lay their eggs in only a single PART of a single species. Then there’s our inquilines that only can use a very specific gall from a specific other insect on a very specific host. There’s even parasitoids (when the creature needs to eat and kill the host species to survive) of inquilines.
Just think, a single gall on a simple oak leaf. It is just a visible symptom of how hundreds to thousands of species interact! How precise different insects are in their biology and specialize within their ecosystems.
We hope you have gained a whole new perspective on how tiny and often overlooked aspects in nature can be wonderfully complex and fascinating! With so much focus on how majestic our wolves and bears and eagles are, sometimes we can overlook our invertebrate cousins.
And with what seems like a lot more new species to be named, be on the look out for more indigenous tricksters in the naming of our inquiline wasp friends!