I’m looking for a bit of advice to see if I’m going about my gall/insect observation in a reasonable manner. I did a hike last weekend and found some interesting plant galls. Occasionally, I would collect one and maybe dissect it to see what’s inside when I returned home.
I collected two and brought them home. But instead of dissecting them right away, I decided to wait, as @Megachile had mentioned in another post how one could wait for adult insects to emerge:
To my amazement, that worked quite well! Today I had what appear to be Gall Wasps emerging. But I was a bit uncertain about how to organize and label these.
- Should the photos of the mature insects be separate from the photos of the galls?
- Since I’ve essentially forced the hatching, speeding it up relative to the prevalent local conditions (still kind of cool outside here), should these be marked as non-wild or tagged in some other way to note the human-influenced nature of them?
- For the photos of the hatched adult insects, do I use the location where I found the gall or where I hatched & photographed them?
These are my observations from the two galls. I’m open to suggestions.