#sceliphron

in the photos above, she has arrived with a ball of mud collected from somewhere nearby. this nest isn't for her to live in, but for her young to grow and pupate. in this mass of mud she will craft several individual cells, and provision them all with the paralysed bodies of orb-weaver spiders. each cell will have a single egg laid on the first spider, before being sealed off with more mud.

here, she picks the next spot to deposit her ball of mud, using her mandibles to smooth it onto the structure. when the larvae hatch, they will consume all the spiders in their respective cells, before pupating and then emerging as adults wasps.

each time she finished with a layer of mud, she would take a moment to groom her forelegs and antennae, before flying off to repeat the process. these photos were taken earlier in the Summer, and as of posting this, the adult wasps have yet to emerge.

A large Sphecid wasp that builds roughly cylindrical cells out of mud (or wet concrete), stocks them with paralysed spiders as food for her young, then covers the entire thing in another layer of mud.

S. laetum is found across most of Australia, Papua New Guinea, and SE Asia. They find the sheltered walls of human buildings ideal wasp building sites. Like most solitary wasps, not particularly aggressive unless you go out of your way to bother them.

Spider Wasp, genus Fabriogenia.

Potter Wasp, subfamily Eumeninae.

Potter Wasp, genus Paralastor.

Square-headed Wasp, subfamily Crabroninae.

Vase-cell Mud-dauber Wasp, Sceliphron formosum.

Square-headed Wasp, genus Pison.

The genus Sceliphron occurs world-wide but only two species are generally recognized as native to Australia (although a single specimen from Parkerville in the Darling Range here in Perth might be a third species).

S. laetum I've already discussed - this is S. formosum. The Vase-cell Mud Dauber was originally confined to northern and eastern Australia but is now known to inhabit an increasingly wide area around Perth.

The North American S. caementarium is also found in Australia, after spreading across the Pacific. It's well-established in eastern Australia but has not yet reached Western Australia as far as I know.

S. formosum can be distinguished from laetum by its markings and by the construction of the nest - individual cells with a flat cap at one end, when complete, that are left uncovered by additional mud.

Pity I didn't spot that dead weevil when I took this photo at Coopers Mill on Cooleenup Island.

Yellow legged mud dauber wasp -

Sceliphron caementarium

Alabama, USA