Getting and keeping
wowbugs
It is perfectly possible to obtain wowbugs
by simply dissecting a mud dauber nest,
following procedures on our Web site
(wowbugs.com) and in the resource guide.
However, they are also available at very
little cost from Carolina Biological Supply
Company.
When you order wowbugs com-
Figure 3
mercially, they may still be within the
“cocoons” (the technical name is puparia)
of the fly pupae that served as laboratory
hosts. Soon they will chew out of these
When it comes to taking advantage of
brown cases to emerge as new adults.
a host, Melittobia is a real powerhouse.
An inexpensive way to introduce stu-
One female can produce more than 500
dents to wowbugs with a minimum of
offspring that mature in about three weeks
direct handling is to put the entire cocoon
(see Figure 3). About 95% will be females,
into a heavy-duty resealable zip-top plastic
and each can produce 500 more. By the
bag. Place the bag on a small tray covered
time a mud dauber has finished building
with white paper. When the adult wow-
one summer’s nests, a single female Melit-
bugs emerge, they crawl around inside
tobia potentially has produced over a mil-
lion descendants! This is just one of many
reasons why people call these insects
Figure 4
wowbugs.
Classroom activities
Wowbugs make great subjects for class-
room studies on a wide range of subjects
from physics to chemistry to biology and
natural history. To get you started, our
resource book, WOWBugs: New Life for
Life Science, has twenty investigations
suitable for students from the elementary
grades upward through high school. each
concludes with several ideas for further
study. We hope you’ll use these ideas as
a springboard, and also make wowbugs
available to interested students for inde-
pendent research. We’ve already learned
of several winning wowbugs science fair
entries, and even had the privilege of serv-
ing as mentors for a few. At the other end
of the spectrum, we’ve found that even
relatively young and/or inexperienced
students can easily observe the developing
insects with a hand lens at regular inter-
vals and keep a written journal record of
their observations (see Figure 4).
© synergy learning • 800-769-6199 • March/april 2010 Connect • page 9