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.

This is Prinerigone vagans.

I’ve never seen one — that’s a European species. I have seen other Linyphiidae in my neighborhood. They’re quite small sheet web weavers.

Now this one I have seen frequently around here: Tegenaria domestica, the barn funnel weaver.

They’re one of the bigger spiders around here. They’re funnel web weavers, and they like dark corners of your garage or basement, where they build dense sheet webs with a characteristic funnel, where they live. I’ve been startled by these guys — if you poke around and disturb them they will leap out to run away. They’re very fast.

If you combine 69,000 Tegenaria and 42,000 Prinerigone, with a rich food source, this is what you get, the world’s largest known colonial spider web, found in a cave on the Albania/Greece border.

You can read all about it in a paper, An extraordinary colonial spider community in Sulfur Cave (Albania/Greece) sustained by chemoautotrophy, in a journal named Subterranean Biology, or in a more general article in Scientific American.

We report the discovery and detailed analysis of an extraordinary colonial spider assemblage in Sulfur Cave, a chemoautotrophic sulfidic ecosystem located on the Albania-Greece border. The colony, comprising an estimated 69,000 individuals of Tegenaria domestica (Agelenidae) and more than 42,000 of Prinerigone vagans (Linyphiidae), spans a surface area of over 100 m²—representing the first documented case of colonial web formation in these species. Stable isotope analyses (δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N) revealed that the trophic web sustaining this assemblage is fueled by in situ primary production from sulfur-oxidizing microbial biofilms then transferred through chironomid larvae and adults to higher trophic levels. Morphological and molecular data confirmed the identity of the two spider species and revealed that their populations in Sulfur Cave are genetically distinct from other populations. Regarding T. domestica, we found a seasonal pattern in fecundity, with significantly larger egg clutches in early summer. Microbiome analysis of this species also revealed a lower Shannon diversity in the cave population compared with a surface individual captured nearby. Our findings unveil a unique case of facultative coloniality in this cosmopolitan spider, likely driven by resource abundance in a chemoautotrophic cave, and provide new insights into the adaptation and trophic integration of surface species in sulfidic subterranean habitats.

I have a practically empty basement, it would be an interesting project to persuade the local funnel weavers to move in and build a web wall. Unfortunately, it also requires pools of putrid sulfurous water for breeding midges — in the particular cave this comes from, they’re provided by streams cutting through Vromoner Canyon (Vromoner means “Smelly water” in Greek), with bacterial biofilms living on the sulfur and providing food for the midges, which then fly into the spiders’ web. We do have a capped sewer line in the basement, I wonder…

We’re going to need millions of midges continuously spawning deep in the basement and air currents that flush them out into the rest of the house.

I think Mary is going to squelch that plan. But wouldn’t it be glorious?

Today was the day I planned to start breeding my spiders. I have a group of definitely female black widows — they are easily recognizable, because they’re solid black spheres of voracious spiderhood.

Then I have another group set aside that I tentatively identified as male: they were smaller, had more slender abdomens, and just generally looked male. But their small size and slower growth meant they were still juveniles, and assigning sex was a bit more problematic. But they were growing fast, and I anticipated when I went into the lab today that at least some of them would be ready for mating.

I got a terrible surprise. Many of those males had died, unexpectedly. I suspect an epidemic of blue pedipalps, or that I’d waited too long and they died of unrequited love. I still have some vials with smaller presumptive males that I was afraid to offer to the females, because cannibalism, you know.

I had one large surviving male, I thought. Gawain. Gawain will come through for me and inseminate my females. Yes, Gawain would be the hero of the day! Except…

Gawain had become a girl.

Curse that campus-wide epidemic of infectious transgenderism!

She was actually almost certainly female all along, but had just matured enough that her sexual characteristics were inescapable. There go all my plans. She is quite pretty, though.

So now I have to be brave and maybe introduce some of the remaining diminutive males to the ladies, or I’m going to have to order some more black widows.

Sorry, the Christmas eve spider orgy has been cancelled.

I’m just trying to help the AI out.

I think it’s time Guenevir had a lover.

When I become an evil overlord, that will be my catchphrase: “The spiders will feast tonight!”

I got to the bait shop this morning shortly after they got a bulk delivery, and just before they parceled them out into smaller batches, so I was able to buy a whole tub of 20 dozen (240) waxworms for $15.99. That’ll take care of feeding supplies for the next few weeks, right through Christmas, so mission accomplished.

Look at all that squirmy cold protein in thin casings! I was tempted to pop a few in my mouth, but that would be taking food from my babies, so I didn’t.

The colony has expanded just a little bit: all new, roomier containers for the largest of the black widows.

The smaller ones still have some growin’ to do in the incubator, but these I think are just about ripe for breeding.

Looks delicious.

I’d share, but I’ve only got enough for the bigger spiders — these are more expensive than mealworms, but aren’t they festive?

Humans at my house are going to have to settle for a vegetarian shepherd’s pie.

I was about to fix some dinner tonight, when I noticed this resting quietly in my frying pan.

They may have been offering themselves up as a sacrifice, but I am a magnanimous spider lord, and I set them free instead.