Cynipidae

Gall wasps, also traditionally called gallflies, or cynipids, are hymenopterans of the family Cynipidae in the wasp superfamily Cynipoidea. Their common name comes from the galls they induce on plants for larval development. About 1,300 species of cynipids are known worldwide, with about 360 species of 36 different genera in Europe and some 800 species in North America. Paraulacidae and Diplolepididae were traditionally included within the Cynipidae but have since been designated as their own families after recent phylogenetic studies.

Cynipidae

Judy Gallagher · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
CynipoideaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 44 million years on record.

The record covers at least 72.2 Mya to 27.3 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 83.6 Mya to 23.04 Mya.

Late Cretaceous — about 1 of 11 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 11 occurrencesEocene — about 7 of 11 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 3 of 11 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 0 of 11 occurrences85–83 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences83–81 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences81–79 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences79–76 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences76–74 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences74–72 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences72–70 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences39–37 Mya — about 2 occurrences37–34 Mya — about 4 occurrences34–32 Mya — about 1 occurrence28–26 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences26–24 Mya — about 1 occurrence24–22 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences72.2 Mya27.3 Mya85 Mya22 Mya

11 occurrences of Cynipidae on record, most of them in the Eocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

11 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

3 formations

Rott — 50.75°N, 7.26°EBouldnor — 50.74°N, 1.36°WFlorissant — 38.92°N, 105.28°W

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The named rock units Cynipidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 4 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Cynipidae and its relatives

Eocene

Where Cynipidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

956 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Cynipidae, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

6 references

Each of the 11 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Cynipidae

Credit
Judy Gallagher
Licence
CC BY 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Cynipidae was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itCynipoidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Latreille 1802