We went on another field trip today, to barns in Hancock. I had predicted that we’d find many more orbweavers in barns than in garages and sheds, and that’s tentatively true. We first visited a working barn, one with lots of chickens strutting around, and didn’t see a dramatic difference in the spider populations, though — I suspect that chickens are going to eat any large, bold orbweaver that exposes itself. These barns had the densest cobwebs I’ve ever seen, and lots of hidey-holes for our friends the Theridiidae, so we only saw a scattering of S. borealis and P. tepidariorum.

Then we saw the abandoned, crumbling farm down the road. “Hey, let’s go explore that!”

Preston led the way through the weeds and thistles.

This place had definitely seen better days. The ceiling was falling in, the windows and doors were gone, you could just walk in through the gaps in the walls. The floors were littered with old debris from long-gone residents. It was a sad place.

It was clearly an old dairy farm. Maya found the milking room.

Maybe we should have turned back when we found the rotting, decapitated doll. If this were a video game or a horror movie, that would be a sure sign we were on the path to Hell.

But what we found inside were…

[Read more…]

I am just astounded at how many of the local spiders are guarding egg sacs right now. It’s as if they know the typical first frost is at the end of September, and then it won’t thaw until maybe May, so they’d better make babies before the killing freeze descends.

Look, spiders, you should know better than to scurry across the floor of someone who has a bag of petri dishes and brushes and vials and who is currently known to scrutinize every corner and surface for spiders. It’s like you’re just asking to be captured.

Fortunately for her, I only hunt with a camera and she is about to be released into my garage.

This is Monica.

Monica is Steatoda borealis, and she’s huge. She’s twice the size of our Parasteatoda, and looks simply immense after working with our familiar little guys. She’s big even for S. borealis.

I gave her away to another home earlier this summer. A student was looking for a pet spider, and had a nice terrarium setup, and was going to feed her crickets, so it was safe. She showed up at my door today with Monica, and asked, “Is that an egg sac?”

Sure is. Then she said, “I’m not ready to take care of a family,” a very responsible attitude to have, “would you take her back?” And of course I would. So I brought her back to the lab, and set her up in a nice spacious cage, and fed her lots of flies. I pulled out the egg sac and put it in a Petri dish, and that’s when I notice all the little black dots scurrying around in her old jar. This wasn’t Monica’s first go-round. She’d laid an earlier egg sac, unnoticed, which had hatched out probably last week, and laid a second sac, which we’d finally noticed. Here’s one of the many S. borealis babies.

So now I’ve got hundreds of P. tepidariorum babies, a half dozen S. triangulosa babies, and on top of that I’ve just added what looks like 40 or so S. borealis juveniles, and a clutch of S. borealis eggs to nurse. All of these have appeared at my lab door in the last two weeks. Hey, it’s nice, but did they all have to appear at once?

In the early morning, we go on long spiderwalks looking for wild spiders. In the late morning I go in the lab to look for new spider egg sacs. In the afternoon I sort and tend to spiders. I’m going to have to think of a good spider-themed activity for my evenings.

Oh, yeah, I read papers about spiders.

Anyway, today I can report that a third egg sac is now leaking baby spiders. They are totally cute.

However, in less happy news, the Ministry of Reproduction finds it necessary to report Brienne for willful slacking of her responsibilities. We have been giving Brienne special privileges — the warmest part of the stack of spider cages, lots of food, and we’ve just been expectantly watching her for the last week. Brienne has gotten huge — just look at that swollen abdomen.

Yet she refuses to produce an egg sac, simply sitting in the same spot all the time, growing larger. Well, the Forced Birth Committee of the Ministry is having none of that. We expect her to do her duty and produce a massive quantity of eggs in short order, or we’ll have to move her into a small vial and give her voluminous cage to a more fertile female.

Or maybe we’ll have to give her a new consort. Is she just holding out for a hunkier male?

I’m new to this arachnology business, so when I find an unfamiliar species, beyond the ones I encounter all the time in familiar habitats, I get completely lost. This one, for instance, is very pretty, and I looked at the shape of the abdomen and said “Theridiidae?”, but then I saw the lack of stripes at the limb joints and the very striking white markings, and I switched to “Idunno?”.

I’m going to have to plug away at this for years before I acquire a clue. It’s intimidating.

For our spiderwalk this morning, Mary and I strolled down the street to the Morris Area Elementary School. I had low expectations because, well, children. Those expectations were confirmed. Very few spiders were observed, and we had to squirm into awkward places to find most of them.

One confounding variable is that MAES is a relatively new building built of brick. To a spider, those vast featureless walls are a barren desert with few places to get shelter. Window frames were better; we saw lots of spider webs, but they were mostly frail, fragile things, as if someone had recently scrubbed the place. The only spiders we saw were on the outside of a couple of metal sheds that had been put up, apparently to support some recent construction going on.

What few spiders we did find were Steatoda borealis, which is interesting. Most of our survey work has been on the interiors of sheds and garages, which are dominated by Parasteatoda and Pholcus, while when I scan external surfaces, I’m finding many more S. borealis. They’re somewhat larger (although not today — everyone was on the small side, perhaps because the children have been harvesting the meatiest specimens) and maybe hardier. We’ll keep looking.

[Read more…]

My student, Maya, found this pretty little stilt-legged cellar spider in her dorm. I need to share.

Their legs are so long I can’t fit the whole animal into the frame at the lowest magnification of my scope.