The Dinuba material was emerging on January 20 (in 1925). My Scott Valley material emerged on January 21 (1926).
The eggs, layed in mid-winter, give rise to the galls of the bisexual incepta in March or April.
Cynips echinus variety vicina
bisexual form incepta, new form
Figures 25, 182
FEMALE AND MALE—With the entire antenna in both sexes brownish black; the parapsidal grooves distinct to the pronotum; the scutellum distinctly smooth, most so anteriorly, the foveal groove smooth at bottom. Figure 182.
GALL.—Closely resembling the galls of the other bisexual forms of the species; perhaps more ovoid when fresh, the surface then pebbled, bearing low, indefinite ridges which terminate in short, soft spines especially near the apex of the gall; on young twigs of Quercus Douglasii.
RANGE.—Probably as given for the agamic form of variety vicina (fig. 25). The bisexual form known definitely only from Kelseyville, California (P. Schulthess coll.).
TYPES.—2 females, 8 males, and 11 galls. Holotype and paratype females, males, and galls in the Kinsey collection. Galls at the American Museum of Natural History and the U.S. National Museum. Labelled Kelseyville, California; galls April 11 and May 8, 1926; insects April 21, 1926; Q. Douglasii; P. Schulthess collector.
The galls collected by Miss Schulthess on April 11 (1926, at Kelseyville) were full-sized and contained larvae that soon transformed into adults which emerged on April 21. Ten adults were recovered from eleven galls, but only two of the adults were females. Galls collected from the same locality on May 8 (also 1926) were all empty of adults.
We may expect to find the bisexual forms of two varieties of this species on Quercus Douglasii at Kelseyville, since there are two agamic insects, echinus and vicina, on that oak in that locality. The material here interpreted as the bisexual form of vicina is certainly distinct from ribes. The type material of ribes came from Oroville, a locality well inside the range of form echinus and therefore the probable alternate of echinus rather than of vicina. Incepta then should be the alternate of the agamic vicina, a conclusion that is also favored by the fact that vicina is the more common of the two agamic
