On no! It’s sad news.
Biologists in regions of the Southern U.S. noticed that the iconic black widow spider — known for its telltale hourglass mark and venomous bite — often disappeared when a different species, brown widows, showed up. Now, new research published in the Annals of the Entomological Society of America provides compelling evidence that the brown widows are indeed driving Southern black widows out, in part by attacking and killing the well-known arachnids.
“They don’t seem to be good neighbors with each other,” Louis Coticchio, a biologist and graduate student at the University of South Florida who led the research, told Mashable.
It’s specifically the brown widows who have their hate on for black widows.
To best see what’s transpiring between these two widow species, Coticchio tested close brown widow interactions with three related spider species: the Southern black widow, the red house spider (Nesticodes rufipes), and the triangulate cobweb spider (Steatoda triangulosa). The interactions happened in containers filled with twigs and branches.
The results were stark. Brown widows were 6.6 times more likely to aggressively attack the black widows compared with the other species.
Can’t we all get along? I can tell you from personal experience that black widows are calm, mellow spiders who don’t want any trouble — they just like to chill in some twigs and branches and be at peace with the world.
This news makes me want to run over to the lab and cuddle and snuggle with my little guys, give ’em a snack, and tell them that I appreciate them. But I can’t! I’m snowed in, the sidewalks and roads are treacherous, and my wife, who is trapped at work, texted me to sternly tell me I’m not allowed to clear the driveway until she’s home to make sure she doesn’t become a widow.
Freud might refer to this spider feud as narcissism of small differences.
Well, it seems that spiders can be as murderous as most humans. No need to say more.
Stay safe PZ, no brown widows for you.
I’m not sure about the Black Widow, but their Aussie cousins, the Redback, may be calm and mellow, but they are calm and mellow around garage light switches, and in shoes, up until humans want to flick a light switch or put something on their feet, and then they become assassins.
Yep! Growing up in the bush in Australia, I remember walking into our bathroom to see a giant black spider on the window, body about almost 3 cm long, big chunky guy, massive thick web, in the two corners of the bathroom was two skinny average sized daddy long leg. I chuckled because it was obvious they would end up food for the massive big spider…. About 3am, came back from a mates house, turned on the bathroom light, there was the two daddy long legs cornering the black spider in the corner of the window, both on each side of it. In the morning when I came back, the black spider was wrapped in a web, dead. Must have been an epic fight, I wonder what the advantage is, maybe the long legs allow them to stay out reach and attack from above?
Are they driving them off, outcompeting them, or finding them delicious?