Kinsey: Gall Wasp Genus Cynips 
317 
Q. alba and Q. stellata, with variety anceps occurring on six 
oaks. The chestnut oaks are included among the hosts of the 
species on the basis of material insufficient for description, but 
this extends our records to all of the groups of white oaks. 
It is difficult to show the varying degrees of relationships 
between the varieties of mellea without seriously complicating 
our nomenclature. The affinities line up as we might expect 
from the geographic distribution. The more eastern varieties, 
Carolina and crassior, are closely related. The southern Appa- 
lachian litigans , located geographically between crassior and 
anceps, is in many respects intermediate between those two, 
interbreeding with its neighbors wherever it makes contact 
with one or the other of them. The variety albicolens on Q. 
alba belongs to this same group. Anceps, compta, unica, and 
rydbergiana form a related series that carries the species west 
to the southern Rocky Mountain area. In our Southeast we 
have three varieties, concolor , mellea, and bifurca, which differ 
from all the others in being wholly rufous or brownish rufous. 
Nine of the varieties of this species are long-winged, but 
mellea and bifurca are short-winged. Bifurca, however, is a 
highly variable insect that clearly evidences the origin of the 
short-winged varieties of Cynipidae by direct mutation from 
long-winged stocks. These data are further detailed under 
bifurca. The discovery of this insect removes the last excuse 
for maintaining previous classifications in which mellea has 
been considered a Sphaeroteras, with the long-winged insects 
classified as not well established members of “Diplolepis” 
(— our present Cynips ) . 
The generic assignment of mellea is discussed in the intro- 
duction to the subgenus Acraspis. 
Cynips mellea variety rydbergiana (Cockerell) 
agamic form 
Figures 51, 386 
Dryophanta rydbergiana Cockerell, 1903, Canad. Ent. 35: 217. Beuten- 
miiller, 1911, Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. 30: 355. Thompson, 1915, 
Amer. Ins. Galls: 16, 38. Felt, 1918, N.Y. Mus. Bull. 200: 96. 
Diplolepis rydbergiana Dalla Torre and Kieffer, 1910, Das Tierreich 
24: 370. Weld, 1926, Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus. 68 (10) : 31. 
Cynips mellea var. D Kinsey, 1927, Field and Lab. Manual, in Biol.: 
110 . 
