Mud dauber nest showing materials used. Photo by Tuleyome.
Of the over 4,000 known species of wasps in California, two are known as mud daubers: Sceliphron caementarium (black and yellow mud dauber) and Chalybion californicum (blue mud dauber).
Mud daubers get their name from their habit of using mud to build their nests, while most wasp species use wood pulp for nest construction. If you ever get a chance to see the nest making process, it is a sight that inspires awe and appreciation for these hardworking builders.
Blue mud daubers look intimidating, but if you set the fear aside, they are exquisite, with metallic blue-black bodies and iridescent wings that shimmer in the sunlight. Their threadlike waists are part of what makes them look menacing, but also add to their elegance.
Black and yellow mud daubers don’t have the iridescent flair of the blue, but are beautiful in their own right. They are mostly black with small yellow markings on their thorax and abdomen, the yellow being more pronounced on their legs. Their long threadlike waists give them an overall slender appearance, and they have beautiful tawny-colored wings.
Despite their intimidating appearance mud daubers are very docile, and extremely unlikely to sting a human unless provoked or accidentally smooshed.
Mud daubers are solitary wasps, and unlike social wasp species, do not tend to be as protective of their nests. This is likely because without strength in numbers they are better off fleeing rather than fighting a threat. When a nest is disturbed, they will often abandon the nest and rebuild elsewhere. So, unless you are a spider, be not afraid.
Both species can be found in a variety of habitats and build their nests in sheltered locations. Their nests are commonly found under eaves of buildings, under bridges and even in sheds. In natural settings they nest under rock overhangs or in hollow trees.
In both species, it is the females who are the builders. They seek out nesting sites with access to mud and ample spiders and begin construction by gathering mud from nearby creek beds or puddles. She uses her mandibles and front legs to form a compact ball of mud and saliva which she carries back to the nest in her mouth.
At the nesting site, she makes a high-pitched sound by activating her flight muscles, causing her head and mandibles to vibrate rapidly, which helps her to shape and spread the mud evenly into a tubelike chamber.
She will add mud until the chamber is large enough to contain an adult wasp, usually 30 to 40 mud foraging trips. A finished nest is made up of 6 to 25 of these individual chambers, painstakingly built over the course of several days with hundreds of trips to gather mud.
Once an individual cell is complete, she will begin to provision it with food for her egg. While adult mud daubers feed primarily on nectar from flowers (their threadlike waist or petiole is too small to process solid foods), their larvae exclusively eat spiders.
Because the larvae require fresh food, dead spiders won’t do. Instead, she will hunt and sting a spider, using venom to paralyze it, and bring the immobile but very much alive spider back to the nest, where she will stuff it into the chamber.
This continues until the chamber is full of spiders, sometimes up to two dozen. Once filled, she will lay a single egg on the spiders, and seal the chamber with more mud before moving on to the next cell.
The egg hatches about three days later, and the larva will begin eating the spiders over the next two weeks, until the larva spins a cocoon, where it will undergo metamorphosis before emerging as an adult the following spring or summer.
Blue mud daubers, in addition to building their own nests, seek out abandoned nests from other species to conserve energy. Sometimes blue mud daubers will even take over an active nest of another species, especially the nests of black and yellow mud daubers. They will use water to moisten and break into the nesting chambers, remove materials, add new spiders and lay their own egg inside.
Black and yellow mud daubers seek out smaller spiders such as orb weavers, crab spiders, and jumping spiders whereas blue mud daubers are known to hunt larger and venomous spiders, their preferred prey being black widow spiders. Blue mud daubers are the primary predator of black widows and help keep their numbers in balance.
Adult mud daubers only live between three to six weeks, but during that time they are amazingly productive, providing ecosystem services such as pollination, and spider population management and interesting bug watching for those so inclined. They also manage to make amazing architectural structures. They are good neighbors to us.
Alarmingly, insect populations worldwide are significantly on the decline due to habitat loss, pesticide use and climate change. One way that we can help our insect neighbors (and the species that depend on them such as birds) is by finding ways to coexist.
You can be a good neighbor to mud daubers by leaving nests over the winter, and allowing them to complete their life cycle. Removing spent nests in spring causes no harm, and is generally considered safe. If you are so inclined, you could even leave the spent nests and save them a bit of work next year.
More importantly, think twice before calling a pest control company or spraying pesticides as they cause harm all along the food chain and negatively impact our shared environment. Plus, those spiders might seem pesky, but they are a needed meal for a future pollinator.
Diana Drips is a Certified California Naturalist. Tuleyome is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit conservation organization based in Woodland, California. For more information go to www.tuleyome.org.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — There are many new dogs waiting for homes at Lake County Animal Care and Control’s shelter this week.
The dogs available for adoption this week include mixes of border collie, bulldog, cattle dog, Doberman Pinscher, German shepherd, Great Pyrenees, husky, Labrador Retriever, pit bull terrier, terrier and shepherd.
Dogs that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are either neutered or spayed, microchipped and, if old enough, given a rabies shot and county license before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.
Those animals shown on this page at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption.
Call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278 or visit the shelter online for information on visiting or adopting.
The shelter is located at 4949 Helbush in Lakeport.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, and on Bluesky, @erlarson.bsky.social. Find Lake County News on the following platforms: Facebook, @LakeCoNews; X, @LakeCoNews; Threads, @lakeconews, and on Bluesky, @lakeconews.bsky.social.
Written by: Suvrat Dhanorkar, Georgia Institute of Technology
It’s easier than ever to repair or recycle electronic devices. Elisa Schu/picture alliance via Getty ImagesElectronic gifts are very popular, and in recent years, retailers have been offering significant discounts on smartphones, e-readers and other electronics labeled as “pre-owned.” Research I have co-led finds that these pre-owned options are becoming increasingly viable, thanks in part to laws and policies that encourage recycling and reuse of devices that might previously have been thrown away.
Amazon, Walmart and Best Buy have dedicated pages on their websites for pre-owned devices. Manufacturers like Apple and Dell, as well as mobile service providers like AT&T and Verizon, offer their own options for customers to buy used items. Their sales rely on the availability of a large volume of used products, which are supplied by the emergence of an entire line of businesses that process used, discarded or returned electronics.
Originally intended to reduce the amount of electronic waste flowing into the state’s landfills, California’s law did far more, unleashing a wave of innovation, our analysis found.
We analyzed the patent-filing activity of hundreds of electronics firms over a 17-year time span from 1996 to 2012. We found that the passage of California’s law not only prompted electronics manufacturers to engage in sustainability-focused innovation, but it also sparked a surge in general innovation around products, processes and techniques.
Faced with new regulations, electronics manufacturers and suppliers didn’t just make small adjustments, such as tweaking their packaging to ensure compliance. They fundamentally rethought their design and manufacturing processes, to create products that use recycled materials and that are easily recyclable themselves.
For example, Samsung’s Galaxy S25smartphone is a new product that, when released in May 2025, was made of eight different recycled materials, including aluminum, neodymium, steel, plastics and fiber.
Combined with advanced recycling technologies and processes, these materials can be recovered and reused several times in new devices and products. For example, Apple invented the Daisy Robot, which disassembles old iPhones in a matter of seconds and recovers a variety of precious metals, including copper and gold. These materials, which would otherwise have to be mined from rock, are reused in Apple’s manufacturing process for new iPhones and iPads.
How do consumers benefit?
In the past two decades, 25 U.S. states and Washington D.C. have passed laws requiring electronics recycling and refurbishing, the process of restoring a pre-owned electronic device so that it can function like new.
The establishment of industry guidelines and standards also means that all pre-owned devices are thoroughly tested for functionality and cosmetic appearance before resale.
Companies’ deeper engagement with innovation appears to have created organizational momentum that carried over into other areas of product development. For example, in our study, we found that the passage of California’s law directly resulted in a flurry of patents related to semiconductor materials, data storage and battery technology, among others. These scientific advances have made devices more durable, repairable and recyclable.
For the average consumer, the recycling laws and the resulting industry responses mean used electronics are available with similar reliability, warranties and return policies as new devices – and at prices as much as 50% lower.
This artist’s rendering shows the ESCAPADE probes near Mars. NASA
After a yearslong series of setbacks, NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, or ESCAPADE, mission has finally begun its roundabout journey to Mars.
Launched on Nov. 13, 2025, aboard Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, ESCAPADE’s twin probes will map the planet’s magnetic field and study how the solar wind – the stream of charged particles released from the Sun – has stripped away the Martian atmosphere over billions of years.
But this low-cost mission is still only getting started, and it’s taking bigger risks than typical big-ticket NASA missions.
ESCAPADE is part of NASA’s Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration, or SIMPLEx, program that funds low‑cost, higher‑risk projects. Of the five SIMPLEx missions selected so far, three have failed after launch due to equipment problems that might have been caught in more traditional, tightly managed programs. A fourth sits in indefinite storage.
ESCAPADE will not begin returning science data for about 30 months, and the program’s history suggests the odds are not entirely in its favor. Nonetheless, the calculus goes that if enough of these missions are successful, NASA can achieve valuable science at a reduced cost – even with some losses along the way.
First light taken Nov. 21, 2025, from the VISIONS camera aboard Gold, one of NASA’s ESCAPADE spacecraft, showing the side of a solar panel. The left image is the visible-light camera, sensitive enough to image Mars’ green aurora. The right image is from an infrared camera and shows temperature differences, from warmer (yellow and orange) to cooler (purple and black), that can distinguish geologic features on Mars.NASA/UCB-SSL/RL/NAU-Radiant/Lucint
ESCAPADE is at the other end. It’s a class D mission, defined as having “high risk tolerance” and “medium to low complexity.”
Of the 21 class D missions that have launched since the designation was first applied in 2009, NASA has not had a single class D mission launch on schedule. Only four remained under budget. Four were canceled outright prior to launch.
ESCAPADE, which will have cost an estimated US$94.2 million by the end of its science operations in 2029, has stayed under the $100 million mark through a series of cost‑saving choices. It has a small set of key instruments, a low spacecraft mass to reduce launch costs, and extensively uses generic commercial components instead of custom hardware.
NASA also outsourced to private companies: Much of the spacecraft development went to Rocket Lab and the trajectory design to Advanced Space LLC, with tight contract limits to make sure the contractors didn’t go over budget.
Additional savings came from creative arrangements, including the university‑funded VISIONS camera package and a discounted ride on New Glenn, which Blue Origin wanted to fly anyway for its own testing objectives.
Commercial space
ESCAPADE launched at a moment of transition in space science.
That boom has, in part, led to a resurgence in NASA’s “faster, better, cheaper” push that originated in the 1980s and ‘90s – and which largely faded after the 2003 Columbia disaster.
In theory, leaner NASA oversight, greater use of off‑the‑shelf hardware and narrower science goals can cut costs while launching more missions and increasing the total science return. If ESCAPADE succeeds in delivering important science, it will be held up as evidence that this more commercial, risk-tolerant template can deliver.
The trade-offs
A concept put forward by Jared Isaacman, the Trump administration’s nominee to lead NASA, is that 10 $100 million missions would be better than one $1 billion flagship – or top-tier – mission. This approach could encourage faster mission development and would diversify the types of missions heading out into the solar system.
But that reorganization comes with trade-offs. For example, low‑cost missions rarely match flagship missions in scope, and they typically do less to advance the technology necessary for doing innovative science.
Early in ESCAPADE’s development, my role was to help create a planning document for the VISIONS cameras called the Science Traceability Matrix, which defines an instrument’s scientific goals and translates them into concrete measurement requirements.
My colleagues and I systematically asked: What do we want to learn? What observations prove it? And, critically, how precisely does the instrument need to work to be “good enough,” given the budget? Loftier goals usually demand more complex instruments and operations, which drive up costs.
ESCAPADE’s broader goals are to create a clearer picture of Mars’ magnetic field, how the solar wind interacts with it, and figure out what that process does to Mars’ atmosphere. That is valuable science. But it is more modest than the $583 million predecessor mission MAVEN’s more extensive scope and richer suite of instruments. It was MAVEN that determined how and when Mars lost its once-dense atmosphere in the first place.
Both ESCAPADE and MAVEN are dwarfed again by the open‑ended potential of an operation like the James Webb Space Telescope, which observes a limitless slate of astronomical objects in the infrared light spectrum with a higher resolution than any combination of prior smaller telescopes.
Flagship missions like the James Webb Space Telescope push the state of the art in new technologies and materials. These innovations then filter into both future missions and everyday life. For example, the Webb telescope advanced the medical tools used in eye exams. Smaller missions rely more heavily on existing, mature technologies.
And when systems are built by private companies rather than NASA, those companies keep tight control over the patents rather than openly spreading the technology across the scientific community.
A tense road to launch
ESCAPADE’s principal investigator, Rob Lillis, has joked that it is the mission with 11 lives, having survived 11 near‑cancellations. Problems ranged from being late in reaching the technology readiness levels that helped ensure the probes wouldn’t malfunction after launch, to the loss of its original free ride, with NASA’s Psyche mission.
In 2024, ESCAPADE received support from NASA to ride on New Glenn’s maiden flight, only to face delays as Blue Origin worked through technical hurdles. At last, in October 2025, ESCAPADE reached the launchpad.
I traveled to Cape Canaveral for the launch and felt the tension firsthand. The first window was scrubbed by bad weather and issues with ground equipment. Then a strong solar storm — ironically, a key driver of the very processes ESCAPADE will study — shut down the second window.
Finally, on Nov. 13, after repeated setbacks, New Glenn lifted off to cheers around the country. ESCAPADE reached orbit, and after a nervous few hours of receiver misalignment, mission controllers established communication with the spacecraft.
What’s next
While in Florida, I also watched another milestone in commercial spaceflight: the record-breaking 94th launch from Cape Canaveral in 2025, marking the most launches from Florida in a single year. It was a SpaceX Falcon 9 carrying Starlink satellites.
Like New Glenn, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 saves money by landing and reusing rockets. If multiple providers like SpaceX and Blue Origin compete to keep launch prices low, the economics of small science missions will only improve.
On Nov. 10, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, the record-breaking 94th launch of 2025.SpaceX
If ESCAPADE’s twin spacecraft reach Mars and deliver new insights as planned, they will demonstrate how minimalist, commercial-forward approaches can expand the planetary knowledge base.
But even then, a string of future SIMPLEx successes would likely not be a substitute for the uniquely capable, technology‑advancing flagship missions that answer the most far‑reaching questions. ESCAPADE can instead help test whether a broader mix of small missions – leaning on commercial partners and a few big, ambitious flagships – can together sustain planetary science in an era of tight budgets.
For now, that balance remains an open experiment, and only time will tell whether ESCAPADE is a lone bright spot or the start of a real shift.
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