The numbers don’t lie: the results in progress say the spider population has been surging since June (which is, well, not unexpected and won’t get us published in Nature). I’ll be curious to see if it continues to rise in August, and since we’re seeing a fair number of spiderlings everywhere, I expect it will.

We’re already talking about extending the study a couple more months, at least until the first snow, so we can catch the expected decline. The only problem with that is that we can’t do the intensive survey in September and October that we can in July, since I’ll be back to work teaching, and the students will be back to work learning. Maybe we can do a representative subset, though.

Also, I don’t think my bones can handle simultaneously teaching and doing field work. I’m pretty much worn out already, and am getting up in the morning to take prophylactic NSAIDs to keep going. The exercise is good for me, right?

It’s been a long day — I’ve decided we can survey 8 sites per day, so we did, in the heat and the dirt, with constant drizzly rain, and by golly, we’ll do it again tomorrow. I look forward to the big pile of data I’ll have at the end of the week, and a nap.

Also, I think I’ve downed a couple of liters of iced tea since I got home.

Wring me out, I’m done. We’re back into the field work this week, and I’m glad we’re doing only 3 one-week sessions this summer. We visited half a dozen sites today, and while most of them were around 30°C, there were a few that were toasty hot and 35°, and they were dusty and cobwebby, too. It was more exhausting than I expected.

The good news, though, is that I’ve recruited an additional student, and it makes a big difference — we can rip through a garage almost twice as fast as before. We set a goal of 6 houses today, and finished by 3:00, so we’re going to line up 8-10 tomorrow. So far, my unsurprising hypothesis is holding up: we’re finding significantly more spiders during these hot midsummer days.

Mondays are also feeding days, so we did a little lab work on top of everything else. We set up a couple new cages, and also introduced a half-dozen new males to the more lonely females. The students got to watch a mating, and some vigorous dining, and Maya has set up a new cage for a different species, Tegeneria.

Everything is cruising along fine and dandy, except for the fact that I’m a sweaty tired mess when I get home. Also, I haven’t quite recovered from my 4-day weekend at Convergence. Productivity is its own reward, though, right?

This is a lovely video of a man handling a black widow spider. Really, they aren’t interested in biting you, anymore than you would care to sink your teeth into a mountainside you’re climbing over. You do have to be gentle, though.

I’ve had spiders crawling on me in the lab, and my advice to students is simple: don’t panic, lead them to where you want them to go, and they’ll do you no harm.

It’s day two after the emergence of my S. triangulosa hatch. They’re starting to darken up and look less gelatinous…but still aren’t quite flitting about in their vial. I’ll probably give them some flies tomorrow.

It’s spider feeding time at noon today. I’ll be in my lab, Sci 2390, just off the science atrium, with a bottle of flies, flicking them into containers of hungry predators. It’ll be good bloodthirsty fun.

Don’t worry, the flies are dispatched with admirable alacrity, so they don’t suffer for long.