| They're plant galls, and they're caused by tiny wasps laying their eggs. The galls don't harm the tree, and they provide a home for the wasps during their larval stage. It's simply an example of a mighty tree lending a hand to a diminutive wasp. "The challenge to figure out how this wasp gets the plant to change its cells and produce the gall has been called the Holy Grail by some entomologists." There are more than 2,000 known types of plant galls, Russo said, and cynipid wasps cause 900 of those. The wasps lay eggs in spring and fall. The wasps don't eat and live for only about a week and a half. Their sole mission is to find a mate and reproduce. However, the females can reproduce on their own without a mate. These minuscule wasps play an important role in the food chain, Russo said. "The good they do is providing food for a wide variety of animals, including birds, spiders, weevils, moths, lizards and even squirrels, that eat either the larvae or the galls themselves. An oak tree is really a zoological microcosm of a universe. There's a whole bunch of things
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