Gall Week 2021 - recap!
Thank you all for joining the first Gall Week project! Together we created over 6K observations of over 700 species. Galls were documented in 28 states in the US and 15 additional countries. This is incredible because this whole project was born two weeks before Gall Week began. I've also written a short post about gall week, including some figures, here - https://www.bioblitz.club/post/gall-week-2021-recap.
I would like to thank everyone who helped identify the galls, a task that hasn't ended yet. In fact, when you have a minute, please make sure that all your observations have their host stated somewhere, preferably in the "host" field. That will make identification and analysis much easier.
@megachile from Gallformers.org has asked that I include a survey link for everyone who used their website for identification. They would love to get some feedback! "It would be very useful for us to learn what people who aren't on the team and were new to the whole thing we're able to get from the site." Link to the survey -
https://forms.gle/Uyf9TnyLAeDPRuWw8
What's next? I don't know about you, but I'd like to do it again! Would you like to have Gall Week in Spring 2022? Some of the fall galls have spring gall generation; others occur only in the spring. It might be tricky to find a date that would fit different regions, so let's start a discussion in the comments.
Merav
Comments
A spring gall week would be fun. I am also always looking for projects to make the boring winter months more interesting. I would also suggest being careful not to schedule too close to City Nature Challenge.
I really enjoyed this one, and would love to participate in another.
Agree with Sara, a spring gall week would be nice, maybe in late March as it'd be around Spring Break for those of us in school. I should also be in San Francisco around that time to visit family. So I might be able to meet up for some gall observing with anyone interested
For me in Michigan this year, May 12 was maybe a bit early to see developed spring galls while May 24 was just about right. That misses the spring flush in the southern US but they'll have summer galls by then, and it seems reasonably good for CA? Anyway if we're trying to avoid being too close to CNC I think we'd definitely want to do later rather than before. March is not a good time to do gall-hunting in most of the country, but especially if our goal is to catch rare spring galls (most of what you'd find would be dried up overwintered galls). I didn't even see wasps ovipositing until April this year.
For spring galls May is best for mid-Ohio as well, although I start seeing a few things as early as the middle of April, and April was a goldmine during my North Carolina/Virginia trip last year.
May or April sounds good too. I do recall finding a lot more obscure spring galls around mid-May.
how interesting! I think in California mid-late April would be best, but we could try May instead. Would mid-May be ok? or still too early? I'd like to get some of the spring galls here, before they're gone. I remember looking for spring galls on coast live oak in a specific park, and by mid-late April they already hatch.
I think mid-May would make sense yeah. Ultimately we're going to miss someone one way or the other and of course our dedicated observers most likely to find the interesting stuff will be looking throughout the season either way.
It's taken too long to get my Arizona galls up! Enjoy the late submissions.
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