Trypoxylon Politum
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The organ pipe mud dauber (''Trypoxylon politum'') is a
predatory Predation is a biological interaction in which one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill ...
wasp A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder ...
in the family
Crabronidae The Crabronidae is a large family of wasps within the superfamily Apoidea. Taxonomy and phylogeny This family has historically been treated as a subfamily in the now-defunct Spheciformes group under the family Sphecidae. The Spheciformes inclu ...
. It is fairly large, ranging from 3.9–5.1 cm, and has been recorded to fly from May to September. Females and males are similar in colour, a shiny black, with the end part of the back leg being pale yellow to white. The organ pipe
mud dauber Mud dauber (or "mud wasp") is a name commonly applied to a number of wasps from either the family Sphecidae or Crabronidae which build their nests from mud; this excludes members of the family Vespidae (especially the subfamily Eumeninae), which a ...
gets its name from the distinctive shape and composition of its nests. It is native to eastern North America. Organ pipe mud daubers are also an exceedingly docile species of wasp, and generally beneficial to have around, as they serve to keep spider populations down; larvae feed on living paralyzed spiders.


Distribution and habitat

The organ pipe mud dauber ranges from Southeastern Canada to the Eastern United States Mud daubers use tree holes or the underside of bridges to construct their nests out of mud. Nest site choice usually depends on three specifications - a smooth, vertical surface with ample shade and rainfall protection, a source of mud nearby, and an adjacent forest. The females form long mud tubes consisting of multiple cells, which they fortify with paralyzed spiders. The female then lays an egg in each cell and leaves the nest; once the eggs hatch, the larvae feed on the spiders. The larvae then pupate until they become adults. A female can either build a new nest, use an abandoned one, challenge another female making one to claim it as her own, or (on rare occasions) enter a freshly constructed one and remove the egg to replace it with her own. The female typically constructs five or six pipes in a cluster, either side-by-side or on top of each other. When pipes are added in layers, the survivability of the freshly hatched adults decreases, as they must chew their way out of a pipe to emerge. The more pipes clustered on top of one another, the less successful the new mud daubers are going to be to chew their way out alive. A newly hatched adult female usually begins building her new nest within 48 hours of leaving her birth nest.


Life history

In the southern populations, ''T. politum'' has a partially
bivoltine Voltinism is a term used in biology to indicate the number of broods or generations of an organism in a year. The term is most often applied to insects, and is particularly in use in sericulture, where silkworm varieties vary in their voltinism. ...
life-history pattern: Some wasps in these populations have offspring that emerge after winter, before the end of June. Other offspring in this geographical range
overwinter Overwintering is the process by which some organisms pass through or wait out the winter season, or pass through that period of the year when "winter" conditions (cold or sub-zero temperatures, ice, snow, limited food supplies) make normal activ ...
and reproduce after winter. North of central Virginia, the wasps have a
univoltine Voltinism is a term used in biology to indicate the number of broods or generations of an organism in a year. The term is most often applied to insects, and is particularly in use in sericulture, where silkworm varieties vary in their voltinism. ...
life-history pattern, and only produce one generation per year.


Behaviour

Mud daubers of this species are unique, compared to many other wasps, in that males stay at the mouth of the nest to protect the offspring. The male guards the young from intruders, parasites, and other males. This energy investment, to increase the likelihood in the survivability of their offspring, is known as
parental care Parental care is a behavioural and evolutionary strategy adopted by some animals, involving a parental investment being made to the evolutionary fitness of offspring. Patterns of parental care are widespread and highly diverse across the animal k ...
. The male may also help the female in nest construction. Like other wasps, ''T. politum'' is
haplodiploid Haplodiploidy is a sex-determination system in which males develop from unfertilized eggs and are haploid, and females develop from fertilized eggs and are diploid. Haplodiploidy is sometimes called arrhenotoky. Haplodiploidy determines the se ...
. The unfertilized eggs generate males and fertilized eggs become females. Adult mothers feed the fertilized (female) eggs more than the unfertilized eggs. Because of this additional food allotment, females tend to be the larger of the two sexes. This uneven division of resources is called
sex allocation Sex allocation is the allocation of resources to male versus female reproduction in sexual species.Charnov EL. (1982). ''The Theory of Sex Allocation''. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Sex allocation theory tries to explain why many spec ...
. Females showed a positive
correlation In statistics, correlation or dependence is any statistical relationship, whether causal or not, between two random variables or bivariate data. Although in the broadest sense, "correlation" may indicate any type of association, in statistics ...
between body size and increased
fecundity Fecundity is defined in two ways; in human demography, it is the potential for reproduction of a recorded population as opposed to a sole organism, while in population biology, it is considered similar to fertility, the capability to produc ...
, which offers an explanation as to why the bias for increased female food provision and body size exists. Mud duabers feed mainly on three genera of spider: '' Neoscona,
Araneus ''Araneus'' is a genus of common orb-weaving spiders. It includes about 650 species, among which are the European garden spider and the barn spider. The genus was erected by Carl Alexander Clerck in 1757. Description Spiders of this genus prese ...
'', and '' Eustala''.


Parasites

'' Melittobia'', a
parasitoid wasp Parasitoid wasps are a large group of hymenopteran Superfamily (zoology), superfamilies, with all but the wood wasps (Orussoidea) being in the wasp-waisted Apocrita. As parasitoids, they lay their eggs on or in the bodies of other arthropods, ...
, is a common
ectoparasite Parasitism is a Symbiosis, close relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives (at least some of the time) on or inside another organism, the Host (biology), host, causing it some harm, and is Adaptation, adapted str ...
of ''T. politum'' prepupae. Other sources of parasitism include the bombyliid fly ''Anthrax'', chrysidid wasps, and various species of scavenger flies (Miltogramminae). The tufted titmouse ('' Parus bicolor'') is a known predator of ''T. politum'', and may feed on them more commonly than previously thought, as the holes made by the titmouse are similar in shape and size to those made by ''T. politum ''leaving the nest after pupation.


Gallery

Organ Pipe Wasp nest.jpg, New organ pipe wasp nest showing different muds gathered at different places Image:Gathering mud 3552.jpg, An organ pipe wasp gathering mud in South Carolina File:Paralyzed spiders extracted from nest cell of organ pipe mud dauber wasp.jpg, Paralyzed spiders taken from a cell in an organ pipe wasp nest Image:Trypoxylon figulus.jpg, ''Trypoxylon figulus''. A
Palearctic The Palearctic or Palaearctic is a biogeographic realm of the Earth, the largest of eight. Confined almost entirely to the Eastern Hemisphere, it stretches across Europe and Asia, north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. Th ...
species Image:Dauber building nest1.jpg, An organ pipe mud dauber adding to her nest in Virginia File:Trypoxylon politum nest underside.jpg, Nest underside


References


External links

*
Bugguide.netFlorida Nature, Organ Pipe Mud DauberBug of the Week: Organ Pipe Mud Dauber
This Week at Hilton Pond, 1–7 April 2002


See also

*
Hermetia illucens ''Hermetia illucens'', the black soldier fly, is a common and widespread fly of the family Stratiomyidae. Since the late 20th century, ''H. illucens'' has increasingly been gaining attention because of its usefulness for recycling organic wa ...
{{Taxonbar, from=Q28771264 Crabronidae Insects described in 1773 Insects of Canada Insects of the United States