#pholcidae — Public Fediverse posts

#SpiderSunday: Look who molted!

#DailySpiderPic #SpidersOfMastodon #spiders #Araneae #Pholcidae

#SpiderSunday: a tantalizing glimpse inside the abdomen of the _Pholcus_ cellar spider. ???

#DailySpiderPic #SpidersOfMastodon #spiders #Araneae #Pholcidae

It's that time of the week again: time to feed the spiders. I think the cellar spider (_Pholcus_) in the jar won't need food for a while—I've never seen one so fat! I also managed to get three fruit flies into the orbweaver's (_Larinioides_') web with tweezers.

#DailySpiderPic #SpidersOfMastodon #spiders • #Araneae #Araneidae #Pholcidae

The cellar spider (_Pholcus_) under the radiator in my bedroom, enjoying a hand-delivered flightless fruit fly (with a second course wrapped up nearby). Note the distinctive eye arrangement: ( ∵ .. ∵ )

I'm simply amazed by how well these spiders can survive in very dry environments with extremely little food!

#SpiderSunday #DailySpiderPic #SpidersOfMastodon #spiders • #Araneae #Pholcidae

A large crop of fruit flies (_Drosophila hydei_) hatched today. Coincidentally I noticed a tiny orbweaver, barely more than a spiderling, had made a web on the inside of my window, so I carefully used a paintbrush to hold a fruit fly in the web, which it promptly took.

I had also found a smallish cellar spider under the shelves I use as a nightstand, so I moved it into the large jar I had used for the black widow, and, after giving it some time to acclimate, put in several fruit flies. It has already caught and wrapped up three. (Cellar spiders are well known to be impressive hunters.)

Neither are large enough to eat more than a few fruit flies a week, so if I want to make a dent in the flies I must search the apartment for more spiders…

#DailySpiderPic #SpidersOfMastodon #spiders • #Araneae #Araneidae #Pholcidae

#SpiderSunday: under a stone ledge, a cellar spider (family Pholcidae) clutches her bundle of eggs.

Most spiders wrap eggs in sacs of protective silk and fix them to surfaces or hang them from a silk line. Some spiders carry their egg sacs around with them (e.g. Sparassidae, Pisauridae, Lycosidae). Others have eggs lightly scattered over a leaf and covered with a few thin lines of silk, which they guard (e.g. some Salticidae). Cellar spiders like this, however, wrap their eggs very lightly into a ball and carry it in their jaws. Towards hatching, you will be able to see the baby spiders' legs forming inside the eggs as curved stripes.

#ArthroBeauty #DailySpiderPic #SpidersOfMastodon #spiders #SpiderBehaviour #Araneae #Pholcidae

A bit of #OpenAccess #Arachnews:

How do forested buffers around rivers affect the diet of predators like trout and spiders? In the abundant fall season, both get most of their food from terrestrial sources! I'm not sure exactly what this means because ecology is really hard so read the paper yourself: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352249623000319#s0040 :OpenAccess:

Two new species of eyeless, cave-dwelling pholcids described. One is from Australia's ancient Pilbara, a remnant from before Australia aridified. Another is from lava tubes on Réunion Island. Plus some philosophical questions about what a cave is, really. https://subtbiol.pensoft.net/article/105798/ :OpenAccess:

#SciComm #arachnids #spiders #Pholcidae #Tetragnathidae #Lycosidae #caves #ecology #taxonomy