Canned spiders

I found a spider egg case tied to the bottom of my bedside table. I disapproved of the mother's choice of location, and transferred the case to a small canning jar. A week later, they hatched.

Better here than by my bed.

Stripy little critters. I can't identify the species at this stage.

The egg sac looks like a cross spider's (Araneus diadematus) sac, but freshly hatched cross spiderlings are bright yellow with a black patch at the rear. And I have seen no cross spiders inside the house this year.

And then I took the lid off the jar and set it in a warm corner outside.

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Encontré un saco de huevos de araña colgado debajo de mi mesa de noche. No estuve de acuerdo con el sitio escogido por la mamá araña, así que despegué el saco con cuidado y lo acomodé en un frasco con tapa. Una semana más tarde, las ara­ñitas salieron.

El saco (primera foto) se parece al saco de las arañas de la cruz, Araneus diadematus, sus arañitas nuevecitas son de un color amarillo brillante con una mancha negra al extremo posterior. Y no he visto arañas de la cruz en mi recámara este año.

No pude identificar esta familia.

Y luego llevé el frasco afuera, le quité la tapa, y lo guardé en una esquina protegida.

Come into my parlour

Not a pretty picture. Some spiders are horrible housekeepers. At least this one is hiding her face in shame.

Who lurks in this tunnel?

This was behind my stash of gardening tools. I have taken many photos: in a couple I thought I saw a hint of long legs down there in the dark. She's probably another giant house spider. It looks like she's been eating well.

But I have questions: those little ones: are they her brood? The main photo was taken 4 days ago; the babes were tiny. The inset was from this afternoon; there's a spider molt hanging below the growing youngster. 

Both this larger one and the others have striped legs; the hoboes have striped legs, but their shape doesn't look hobo-ish. Are the stripy leggings junior wear?

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Esta no es una foto bonita. Algunas arañas son amas de casa muy descuidadas.

El túnel está escondida tras mis herramientas de jardín, las palas y el rastrillo. Le he sacado muchas fotos, y en algunas creo que se pueden ver unas patas largas en la oscuridad. Probablemente la dueña de casa sea otra araña casera gigante. Y parece que le ha ido bien con lo de la comida.

Pero se me ocurren unas preguntas. Esas arañitas; serán sus crías? La foto principal es de hace cuatro dias, y las arañitas estaban muy chicas. El cuadro tiene una foto de esta tarde, con una araña ya un poco más grande, y su reciente muda.

Las arañitas tienen las patas con rayas. Las arañas Tegenaria, las agresivas, tienen las patas rayadas, pero estas arañitas no parecen tener la forma de una Tegenaria. Será que las rayas son nada más una moda juvenil?

Newborns

I woke up in the middle of the night and turned on the lamp a few inches from my pillow. And found it in the middle of a population explosion.

Newly hatched spiderlings on the lampshade.

The whole lampshade was covered in these miniature crawling specks. So cute!

But I moved the lamp away. And spent a good part of the night sleeping in a chair.

Setting out to explore the world.

Hairy legs. And so young!

The next day, a cellar spider moved in. It was so small, so almost transparent, that I could only see it when the light hit it on a certain angle. Predation begins early.

Today, all the spiderlings are gone, moved on to their new hunting grounds, apparently not near my pillow. (I hope!) Only the cellar spiderling remains.

I'm sending their photos in to BugGuide. I don't really expect much of an id, but the abdomen pattern looks interesting.

*Update: BugGuide identifies them as Steatoda grossa.

Hundreds of spiderlings

Last October, I found a spider's egg case under the eaves of the outhouse at Oyster Bay. I had a plastic jar in the car, and I trapped it inside, brought it home and stored it outside in a couple of flowerpots to keep it cool, but not likely to freeze. When the weather warmed up a couple of weeks ago, I brought it inside so I could keep an eye on it.

For a few days, I could see the spiderlings inside their case, moving about. Then one morning, they were all out and filling the jar with tiny webs.

Some of the spiderlings, seen through the plastic. The blue at the top is the lid. The pale yellow mass in back is the empty egg case.

The plastic was clear enough to even see the eye arrangement on one of the spiders:

Zooming in. Going by the egg case, the shape, the eye arrangement, and the black triangular patch on their abdomens, these are baby cross spiders, Araneus diadematus.

I took the jar outside and left the lid off. Today, five days later, all the spiderlings have moved on. I'll probably find some, later in the summer, inside my house, eating mosquitoes and fruit flies. They're welcome to them.

A size too small

Spider kids grow out of their clothes, too.

Young cellar spider's cast-off leggings and T-shirt, hung out to dry.

Immature spiders molt frequently; they've got a lot of growing to do, from pinprick spiderling size to fat adult. This one was about half-grown, a spider teen. Well-fed, so he grew out of the leggings while they were still new-looking.

To shed the old exoskeleton, the spider has to bust out from the inside. It increases its heart rate to pump a lot of hemolymph (the spider's blood) from the abdomen into the cephalothorax. The pressure expands the cephalothorax, which pushes on the old exoskeleton until it cracks. The spider flexes its muscles until the old exoskeleton falls away. (HowStuffWorks)

One of my crabs molted this morning, too; I found the old carapace and legs up against the glass. When I returned with the camera, after morning chores, it was gone. The hermit crabs collect these, break them up, and clean out any edible remains. The remaining chitin is eaten by bacteria; starfish and certain fish can also digest it.

I don't know what, if anything, eats old spider molts. Something must; in nature, nothing is ever wasted.

Pink nursery

In a niche painted in "French Rose", a cellar spider is raising her brood.

Long-bodied cellar spider, Pholcus phalangioides.

In normal light, she's a light, coffee with cream colour; here everything is infused with pink.

Zooming in on the eggs.

These eggs are almost ready to hatch. The white lines in each one are the long, folded spiderlings' legs.

I looked for her a couple of days later, and she was gone, though a few babies were still hanging around. The mother would be off hunting; she gets hungry, carrying all those eggs by her mouthparts for a week or more.

Emergence

The spiderlings have left the nest!

Pioneer. The first out of the nest, at 9:30 in the morning.

One other spiderling joined him this morning, and they wandered about, stringing their tiny silk threads behind them. The others, more timid, waited until well after nightfall to brave the big new world out there.

10 PM. Spreading out, looking for an exit from the box.

They're lining up along the join between walls of the box. I don't think they can get through the gap, but they're trying.

These babies are not behaving like other spiderlings I've watched; usually, they hang together in a cluster for quite some time after they leave the egg sac. These are individualists from the moment they break free.

About half of them are still keeping cosy in their silk blanket. Homebodies.

The eggs in the second egg sac are on their way; I can see a hint of little legs in there now.

Egg sac # 2. Smaller, but fertile.

There's a third egg sac in the line-up, too. Brownie's not leaving anything to chance.

I'll move the box to a sheltered spot outside tomorrow, and crack the door open a bit. I don't really want the whole tribe settling down in my kitchen.

Dozens of little legs

Last month, my spider-in-a-box laid a clutch of eggs and wrapped them in a silk blanket. When she added a second egg sac, I posted photos here.

Steatoda bipunctata, with first batch, November 6th.

And then ...

November 14th. The eggs are a bit darker.

November 25th. Noticeably darker, and spreading out a bit.

This morning, December 14th. They seem to be moving about in there.

And tonight, 5 weeks after egg-laying. Spiderlings! Still inside the silk cocoon.

They'll be moving out of the egg sac soon, but I couldn't wait to post these pre-hatch photos.

Peekaboo

I brought in a begonia leaf to give my caterpillars some variety in their diet, and found a tiny red and yellow spider on the underside. Two days later, the caterpillars had remodelled the spider's home, adding windows and a door.

And look what was inside!

Spiderlings behind a web curtain

And looking out the window.

Mother and baby. Mommy is 1/2 centimetre long.

The remains of the leaf,, with spiders and aphid.

Watching over her brood.

UPDATE: She's a cobweb spider, Enoplognatha ovata, form redimita. Her spiderlings will overwinter in the leaf litter, so I'll put their leaf back under the begonia where I found it.

So many babies!

I reached under a chair that sits by the back door, sweeping out dead leaves, when I noticed a fringe of spider web on the underside. Flipped over, the chair turned out to be sheltering a spider and her enormous brood of spiderlings.

Mother and egg sac, with frass, and a few of the spiderlings in the upper left corner.

A handful of spiders, about 1 or 2 mm. long.

She had been very busy; there were four of those egg sacs, two still apparently still holding babies. And at least 100 chubby "lings" scattered over the whole bottom of the chair.

'Way back post

I am at work on a longer post, and meanwhile am re-posting some early posts from my starter blog, on Delphi. This is one of the earliest, written in Strathcona, June, 2006. The photo is from Laurie's old film camera.

These little guys are so smart!

Ok, you'll have to click on the photo to see them properly. And even then, they're blurry; they were just too tiny and too active for our camera. But it's the general impression that counts here.

These are baby spiders, just hatched. I had seen some the day before, on the back porch railing. A yellow clump about 1/2 an inch across, vibrating gently. Up close, I could just see the tiny legs moving as they clambered over and under each other.

Half an hour later, when I came back with my glasses, they were gone.

We stopped to talk to a neighbour over her garden gate the next day. In a clump of sedges, Laurie saw what he thought was a yellow flower, and pointed it out to me. "It's more baby spiders," I said, and he bent to look at them more closely. Instantly, the clump disbanded, spreading out over a small web that we hadn't noticed before; efficient predators, commanding as much territory as they were able.

Laurie took his photo quickly, before they spread too far, but once he had moved away, the spiders again froze into position, still looking vaguely like tiny yellow flowers.

So here they are, newborns, out in a big new world for the first time, planning strategy; make a web, clump together to look like a flower so as to lure tiny bugs, and at the first sign of action, prepare to leap!

Co-operation and aggression hand in hand. I am sure many of them, not finding enough noseeums nor tiny crawlies, ate their brothers and sisters.  But still ... they started out with that splendid group effort.

I wish them well.

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Looking back from 2012, I think these are infant Cross spiders, Araneus diadematus. They are plentiful in Strathcona, and those were good years for them.

Baby blue eyes

It doesn't make sense to grumble about the weather, does it? Instead, I'm keeping busy discovering what creepy crawlies are still active in my garden. A great crowd, I discovered, mostly very small. I've found some critters I'd never seen before, and solved an old mystery, to boot. So now there's a ton of work to do, identifying them, taking and sorting photos.

For now, isn't this the cutest baby spiderling?

She's about 2 mm. long.

A chubby-cheeked, fat, and furry infant.

Let it rain!

Heedless, galumphing monster destroys baby's home!

Spiderling, whose web I had inadvertently run into:


Breaking threads spring back, make ribbon patterns in sunlight.


Climbing the last remaining thread to start all over again. Sorry, kid.
.

Weekly beastie fix

Plate 66, Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur
Wikipedia commons

Looks like this week's linkfest will be all creepy-crawlies. And I am glad; for the last week, I've had no tiny visitors. It's been cold enough to send even the spiders into hiding. There is not a web in sight out my back door.

It's the birds' turn. The juncos are back, in force. A tiny brown wren came right up to my door, looking for crumbs. A pair of flickers skirts the edges of the row of evergreens. And the chickadees are as bold and busy as they have ever been.

Still, ... the tiny ones. I miss them.

So, here are the creatures I've picked up on the web this week. Enjoy!

From DailyKos, an essay about a marine worm. And what a worm! Named Aphrodite; for reasons that will be obvious when you click on the link. By the way, did you know there is a species of worm called Bobbit because of the female's habit of feeding the male's penis to her young? (HT to Mark.)

From Deep Sea News: a marine snail covered with scales. Iron sulfide (fool's gold) scales. Talk about armour! "The coolest invertebrate ever", says a commenter.

One more underwater find: the oldest living animal on record. A quahog clam. Unfortunately deceased shortly after the find.

"Researchers from the University of Bangor recently discovered the oldest known animal on record, a 405 year-old clam, while dredging at the bottom of the North Atlantic above Iceland. Then they killed it."
Zoologix

Benny writes tongue-in-cheek. More accurate info at Milk River Blog. But Benny has the better photo.

And on to land ...

"This is so cool. A one-millimeter long spider (Cenotextricella simoni) encased in amber gets "digitally dissected" using Very High Resolution X-Ray Computed Tomography."
From John Lynch at Stranger Fruit. Excellent photos here.

And a good write-up on the same spider, at Richard Dawkins. No photo; good thing John had them!

That was then. And now, we have a Hallowe'en Battle, spider vs. centipede. From Niches.

And "Follow the Leader": spiderlings on a tight-rope. From jciv's Flickr album.

And, in case you haven't had enough, here's Circus of the Spineless # 26. Lots of photos, more great articles!

And I'm going back to browse that Flickr album. See you tomorrow!

Post-coital Bliss, sort of

... at least for half of the happy couple.

Part of a continuing series on the life and times of an Achearanea tepidariorum (American house spider) family. Parts I - Spider Watching, II - Fresh laid eggs!, III - Taking Candy from a Baby, IV - We Haz Babies!, and V - Baby Pictures.

Ever since I first saw a timid male hanging around the edge of Fat Momma's web, I have been trying to catch them in the act of mating. No luck yet, but this is as close as I've come.

After the first egg case was laid, the male had disappeared. Whether she ate him or he was off gallivanting, I couldn't tell.

I kept my eye on her, all through the guarding of that egg case, and eventually another male (or the same one) showed up on the wall near her web. He stayed for a few days and disappeared, coincidentally at the same time that she produced another egg case. (And the same day that the first batch hatched.)

In the month since, a third male appeared, hung around a day or two, and was gone. And Fat Momma had a third egg case, the first still hanging there although it was empty.

I have been busy this last week, and didn't monitor her as closely as I could have. I hadn't seen the fourth male, nor was I aware of the hatching of the next round of spiderlings until three days ago; by then, they were probably about 2 days old.

And Fat Momma has a fourth egg case. And the male was still around. She was busy eating him. (Photo above.)

That question answered. She eats her mates.

(I wanted to confirm that it was her latest mate, and not a random visitor of another species, so I waited until she had finished with him, and fished him out of her web. A long wooden back-scratcher was handy for this job. I looked at the tangled, glued-together mess under my little microscope; yes, it was a small Achearanea. Her poor mate, who had sacrificed his all for love.) (And I have a photo, but I'm sure you don't want to see it. It ain't pretty.)

Laurie wonders how that works out; the successful suitor passes on his genes only once. Worse, I think, is that he has provided food for the female after the fact, after the eggs are laid. So he is getting her in shape for the next batch; the eggs fertilized by his successor. Seems counter-productive to me.

Any thoughts on that, anyone?

And I had wondered about incubation periods. So far, I have a sample size of 3; FM's 2, and Chica's 1. The first batch took 25 days, from July 26 to August 19th. The second batch ran from August 19th to Sept. 17th or thereabouts; 28 days, maybe 27. Chica's batch, laid the same day, has not hatched yet; that's 32 days and counting.*

What has changed? The weather. It is definitely colder these nights, cool in the daytime. And FM's web is in a sheltered corner; Chica's is around the outside corner, exposed to the wind.

Are the incubation periods dependent on the temperature? It looks like I'll have to watch right into next summer to find out.

One more thing; Wren had wanted to see baby spiders, and I couldn't get a decent photo. A few days later, one showed up on my doorpost, so tiny that I don't know how it was that I noticed it, just a black dust speck that caught the light and seemed to have legs. I was in a rush, and only stopped to take one photo. When I came back later, though I searched with a lens up and down the door, I couldn't find any spiderlings at all.

So here is a fuzzy baby pic.



Now to see if I can catch another baby of this latest batch.

*Update; Saturday morning. Chica's eggs are hatching. That's 33 days.

Friday Morning, 2 AM

Work finished, babysitting finished, assorted appointments kept. Whew!

And now to sleep!

Spider blogging coming up anon.

Tiny! Barely visible to the naked eye.

Baby pictures

When the house spider's eggs hatched, 5 days ago, (We Haz Babies!) Wren wrote in the comments that she had only seen masses of spiderlings, never single ones. I have been watching ever since, hoping to catch one on its own.

Difficult. For the first 4 days, they huddled together around the egg case, so tightly that it was hard to see them with the naked eye as more than a grainy mass.

I tried to get photos, but they were just too tiny and too inaccessible, up in the dark corner, far above my reach, even from the stepladder, for clear shots.

Day two. Moving around a bit.

Day three. With artificial light.

Over the last two days, the crowd has been thinning and spreading out; their numbers were dropping. I kept looking for strays, but any that left the group just plain disappeared.

Last night, with only a couple of dozen babies left, I went out after dark with a flashlight and examined the web. Ah-hah! Tiny moving dots showed up along some of the strands. It took some doing, but I caught two.

Day five. Momma and the last of the brood.

Those guys are tiny! Inside, under the light, I could barely see them with the naked eye; they could have been dust motes, for all I could tell. Only with my hand microscope (60x) could I see them with any clarity.

So; no photos of single spiderlings. Sorry, Wren.

At that age and size, their abdomen is a pale yellowish tan, the thorax reddish. But they have their mother's fat belly, the darker joints on the legs, and the beginning of a pattern, tiny black dots on the upper abdomen. And under the microscope, I can see their eyes clearly, something I have never managed with the mother; she always seems to have them shielded behind the legs.

When I had done examining them, I realized that I could have gotten others all over me, prowling around the web; they are so small, I would never have noticed. Suddenly, I could feel them crawling down my neck and up my arms. Nothing but my imagination, but still, I had to shower and change clothes and wipe down the desk with alcohol before I could settle down again.

But what an adventure their life is! So tiny, and walking all that long, long way out of the mother's web, out into the world where danger lurks at every corner. The trees across the lawn are festooned with the webs of Araneus diadematus, several orders of magnitude larger than they and more than happy to snack on a mouthful of baby Achearanea. They will have far to go before they find safe places to set up shop.

We Haz Babies!

American house spider babies, that is. (Background posts: Spider Watching and Fresh-Laid Eggs!)

The proud mother:

Fat Momma with newest eggs

The Achearanea tepidariorum family; Momma, babies and egg case

Spiderlings! Aren't they cute?

I've been checking these eggs morning and evening. They first appeared Monday morning, the 20th. Which makes the incubation period, from July 26th to yesterday, 25 days. That question answered.

And she has laid a second batch of eggs, so I'll be looking for those babes the middle of September.

Next questions: 1. how many of those spiderlings will survive? 2. And how long will they sit around their old case before they move out? (I just checked with a flashlight; they are still clumped in the same spot.)

About the males: back in July, a small male hung around the web for a week or two. Then he disappeared, about the time she laid those eggs. I wondered if he had been eaten. Last week, there was another, a bit smaller; after a few days he had competition, a second tiny male. I kept an eye on them and watched one make advances up to within an inch or so away, but then he retreated to the edge of her web again. Yesterday, there was no sign of either male.

Question # 3: Does she eat the males as soon as they dare to breed with her? Or when she's ready to lay eggs?

Around the corner, Chica has laid her own eggs, the same day. Hmmm...

Chica. I love this photo, against the light.

Next: Baby Pictures