ABSTRACT
The earliest records of galls date to the times of Hippocrates (460-377 BC), Theophrastus (371-286 BC), and Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD). In his Historia Naturalis XXVI, published in the first century, Plinius, known as “the Merciful,” was the first to use the word “gall” to designate the structure induced in oak trees by wasps from the family Cynipidae (Meyer 1987). Although the emergence of insects from these structures has been described by these ancient authors, it was only in the 17th century, with the works of Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694), Anthony van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723), and Jan Schwammerdam (1630-1680) that gall development was linked to the oviposition of an insect.
