Studies of Some New and Described Cynipidae 

 (Hymenoptera)' 



By Alfred C. Kinsey, Assistant Professor of Zoology in 

 Indiana University 



This paper, with the appended paper, offers descriptions 

 of 107 American gall wasps, 70 of which have not been pre- 

 viously described, revises Plagiotrichus , a genus not heretofore 

 recognized in the American fauna, recognizes one new genus, 

 Eetercecus, and offers some data on the variation, distribution, 

 life histories, and phylogeny of the insects. Seventy of the 

 cynipids described are from the Pacific Coast of the United 

 States. 



Probably the most notable departure in this paper is the 

 recognition of varieties. No varieties have been recognized 

 previously in American Cynipidae, and only a very limited 

 use has been made of them in Europe. This is too true for 

 most fields of entomology. Two practices have been followed : 

 closely similar forms have been considered as haphazard vari- 

 ations of one species ; or varieties have been considered as dis- 

 tinct species, as have 18 of the varieties treated in this paper, 

 belonging to seven species. However, variations are usually 

 orderly and abrupt, and much biologic data has been buried 

 by ignoring minor differences. In many cases where the re- 

 lated forms were described as distinct it was due to ignorance 

 of previously described forms, and they have been maintained 

 as distinct by later workers thru continued ignorance of the 

 meanings of the descriptions. Most of these descriptions are 

 truly unusable because they make no comparisons with other 

 forms, and usually fail to describe the very characters in re- 

 gard to which there is any variation. Great confusion has 

 been introduced by the reduction to synonomy of these related 

 things; in the process much biologic data has been scrapped, 

 not to be recovered without difficulty. I acknowledge having 

 copied all of these practices in my own previous publications. 



^Contribution from the Zoological Laboratory of Indiana University No. 186 (Ento- 

 mological No. 2). 



(3) 



