Draft 1

The Black and Yellow Mud Dauber

The black and yellow mud dauber is a type of wasp. Dauber is used to describe a crude or inartistic painter, and these wasps use mud as a building material for their nests, hence the name mud dauber. Their scientific is name Sceliphron caementarium and in Latin caementarium means mason or builder of walls.

Physical Characteristics

The wasps are black and yellow as their name suggests. Most of the body is black with some yellow markings on the legs, head, thorax, and sometimes abdomen.  The wasp’s body differs from what most people think of when they hear wasp, it’s waist between the thorax and abdomen is very narrow, and is slightly longer than the abdomen itself. The wasp is approximately an inch in length.

Mating/Reproduction

The reproduction rate of these wasps is low, as the females will only lay 15 eggs in their lifetime. After mating the female will store the male’s sperm in in her seminal receptacle, allowing fertilization to take place at a later time. The female then finds a suitable location for her nest, somewhere sheltered from the elements like rock ledges, or trees, or underneath overhangs of manmade structures. She takes mud from ponds and slowly constructs cells to store her eggs.  She hunts spiders by paralyzing them with her sting and places them within the cells with her eggs before closing the nest with more mud. The larvae must eat meat to grow and when the hatch they consume the spider that was trapped inside the nest. The larvae then spin cocoons and spend the winter inside before emerging in the spring.

http://www.fnanaturesearch.org/index.php?option=com_naturesearch&task=view&id=296

https://bugguide.net/node/view/6610

http://bioweb.uwlax.edu/bio210/s2012/bain_mega/Reproduction.htm

https://www.heartspm.com/mud-daubers.php

This article discusses the field data that was collected regarding an enemy of the Black and Yellow Mud Dauber wasp, and to my knowledge it’s ability to discern whether or not the mud dauber had infested a spider. The article seems to be a little bit too academic for my research purposes and feels as though I need some background knowledge of the field work that was done to understand the results fully. It briefly touches on the nesting habits of mud wasps to serve as a base for the parasitic wasps of the genus Acroricnus that prey on them. They were looking at the behavioural ecology of the two species and were looking for an explanation for the parasites finding the mud daubers even when concealed in solid substrate, or mud which the mud daubers build their nests out of. Echolocation was what they purposed was the method. It also talks of how the parasitic wasps target young mud daubers and goes on to give detailed explanations.

It certainly seems a reliable source, with pictures, figures, graphs, and data to back up the information they are putting forth.  And the fact that it was found using Fleming own online database makes it seem reliable as well.

Polidori, C., Federici, M., Mendiola, P., Selfa, J., & Andrietti, F. (2011). Host detection and rate of parasitism by Acroricnus seductor (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae), a natural enemy of mud-dauber wasps (Hymenoptera: Sphecidae). Animal Biology, 61(1), 57–73. https://doi.org/10.1163/157075511X554428

http://wwf.panda.org/knowledge_hub/endangered_species/great_apes/gorillas/western_lowland_gorilla/

I chose a species profile on the western lowland gorilla made by the World Wildlife Fund. The intended audience seemed to be anyone who was taking an interest in gorillas as the vocabulary was informative but brief and didn’t seem to pander to any particular age group. It was organized and useful information that most people would want to know. The information was current and reliable, it all pertained to the animal and things that affect it as well. They touched on the gorilla’s physical characteristics, their diet, and also their society, population, and distribution. Another large section or the profile is about the threats that face the animal which isn’t surprising given that at the beginning of the profile they mention how they are considered critically endangered. The rest of the profile talks about what WWF is doing to help them and what anyone reading can do to help. There is also a donate button that is constantly on the screen however after doing some more research on the WWF and looking at their ambitions page on their website it seems to me unassuming, they’re giving the opportunity for people to help their cause.  Overall, I think the profile is well done, I honestly would’ve like to see more information and perhaps more specific information.

The profiling and inventorying of species is necessary and needed. We as humans are responsible for many species in the past become endangered or going extinct entirely. So, it is important to be aware of how we are affecting the other inhabitants of this planet so that we can attempt to remedy anything we’ve done that’s negatively affected them.  I think that it’s a difficult question to ask if we’re doing enough, the more we try to help the more we still interfere, whether the outcome is positive or negative. And I don’t think we should have a hand in every animals’ life and be tweaking things if it’s not to our liking. In the case of this article I feel that the change that’s being done with the new list of endangered species and the push for more research in areas where we don’t know a lot about is a good thing. I just wouldn’t want to see any of this go too far. Collecting data and seeing how what we do affects these plants and animals is a good thing, and so I think that’s all that should be doe with respect to those species. If we want to help those animals and change their current situation, we should be looking at what is the cause of their endangerment. More and more often the cause is global warming, and so there are so many ways we as individuals and as communities can help these species without needing to be there to see the outcomes. I feel as though this was a kind of ramble and it was hard for me to make a point but if I had to make one it would be, I think we should be helping species at risk indirectly and collect data from them only when necessary.

In my experience, Wikipedia is normally a credible and reliable website to use for research or entertainment. In the past I have frequently used Wikipedia to gain a basic understanding of any new topic I am interested in, and my friends and I have in the past played “The Wikipedia Game!”  It puts two (or more) people at a given Wikipedia article as a start point, and they must navigate to another end point article only by clicking hyperlinks within the articles, sometimes the winner was determined by the time it took to get to the end article, sometimes by the number of clicks it took them to get there. Teachers do often prohibit its use as a reference for assignments because anyone can edit the information on any of the articles, whether they know it to be true or not. Though this means that occasionally an article will contain false information most of the time the articles have been written and fact checked by people who know what they are writing about so it is generally a reliable source. Also usually if an article has been written or edited by with false information it’s obvious. I will usually use Wikipedia for research on a school assignment and use their references to find sources that teachers would find acceptable. The article is written in such a way that Wikipedia is this wonderful place to find information written by benevolent writers who seek only to better humanity.  The writer of the article even mentions how it’s sounding that way. I agree with the idea that Wikipedia is a reliable source of information. However I would also advise that one uses a healthy amount of skepticism and suspicion when navigating the website.

My writing begins with a lot of thought and a lot of erasing entirely before something concrete hits the page. Typically when writing essays I would begin in the middle of the essay, work through the body, write the conclusion and then finally complete the introduction. My thought process is “How am I supposed to know what I am introducing before I write it, and what points will I know to bring up before I know how I conclude the essay?” But with all my writing I experience plenty of doubt and revision before I’ve written something I’m happy with. Sometimes this means that I will get frustrated and call the piece of writing complete even though I’m unhappy or sometimes I’ll just leave the piece and never complete it. I like to have my writing reviewed, partially because I will without a doubt have errors that others will see before I do after staring at the same words for so long, but also because I crave validation, and even if I’ve written something I know to be well-written, I want to hear it from someone else. My writing is erratic, and involves a lot of backtracking and searching through dictionary.com and thesaurus.com to find the perfect word(s). I read through my entire piece of writing in my head and less often aloud. I don’t usually write fist drafts and then edit, instead I build the entire thing from the ground up like a building, looking for any gaps or weaknesses in the foundation. And like trying to find that simile, it often takes a while. My writing process shows how much of a perfectionist I am, but I like to think that I communicate well, and with an intelligent vocabulary.  “How do you write?”, I write like me.

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