Blue Mud Dauber

Wasps

{2}

Blue Mud Dauber

I saw an article yesterday on Arstechnica about parasitic wasps. It’s a pretty cool article, check it out:
Parasitic wasp genome offers chance to study sex and death
It made me remember this picture I took, of a blue mud dauber. I think the species is called Chalybion californicum, but I’m not sure.

They make little tunnels of [...]

Velvet Ant

Wasps

{1}

Velvet Ant

Hymenoptera is the order of all of those ant, wasp, bee looking bugs, including the weirder ones like wood wasps and sawflies. Then, inside of this order there is the superfamily Vespoidea. Both ants and velvet ants are in this subfamily.
BUT, ants are in the family Formicidae, and velvet ants have their very own [...]