SOME REPRESENTATIVE INSECTS 



there is no colonial organization, and the social wasps, which live in 

 colonies like those of bees and ants. As an example of the solitary 

 type, the mud-daubers of the genus Pelopccus are frequently 

 seen collecting the mud beside some nearby puddle and patiently 

 making their trips to the protected spot, within the house or porch, 

 that has been selected as the site of their building operations. The 

 nest is usually in the form of several tubes, about an inch in length 

 and placed side by side. When one of these tubes is completed 



Fig. 202. — Solitary wasp, Ammophiiia, provisioning its burrow. 



Left above, dragging to the burrow a caterpillar that it has paralyzed. Riglit above, 

 burrows with same species of caterpillar shown on a smaller scale. Below, excavation of 

 the burrow. (From Hartman, Bulletin No. 65, University of Texas.) 



the wasp collects small spiders, v.hich it paralyzes by its sting and 

 brings to the nest (c/. Fig. 201). Having filled the tube with prey, 

 she lays a single egg, which is attached to the topmost spider, before 

 each tube is sealed. When the larva hatches, it utihzes the spiders 

 as food, and after pupation gnaws its way out as the adult insect. 

 Only the females are active in this nest-building operation, the 

 males apparently dying soon after the mating by which the females 

 receive the spermatozoa that are used in the fertihzation of the 

 eggs as laid. The digger wasps that excavate burrows, which they 

 provision with insects (Fig. 202), and those that excavate tunnels 



