#spiderbehaviour — Public Fediverse posts

#Arachtober 18: an Eastern parson spider (_Herpyllus ecclesiasticus_), a stealthy and fast-moving active hunter, feeding on a male _Zygiella_ missing-sector orbweaver. (This was right behind a female's web.) You can see the distinctive "knees" of the male's pedipalps in focus in the second picture.

#ArthroBeauty #DailySpiderPic #spiders #SpiderBehaviour #Araneae #Gnaphosidae #Araneidae

#Arachtober 12: a small yellow sac spider (_Cheiracanthium_) perches on a fence post and releases a stream of silk strands that are separated and carried aloft by the breeze and (as we've learned in recent years) atmospheric static electricity. If the silk catches on something, the spider can use it to bridge a long gap. Smaller spiders can be borne aloft entirely and traverse long distances, a behaviour called ballooning.

#ArthroBeauty #SpiderSilk #SpiderBehaviour #spiders #Araneae #Cheiracanthiidae

Ooh. Some cool new research on slingshot spiders (_Theridiosoma gemmosum_).

"Saad Bahmla (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA) and colleagues, including Todd Blackledge (University of Akron, USA), discovered in 2021 that they could trick the wily arachnids into releasing their ballistic nets by simply clicking their fingers. Might the weapon-wielding spiders be listening to deploy their webs even before their victims have blundered into them? Sarah Han, also from the University of Akron, and Blackledge decided to test the spiders’ reactions […]

"Sure enough, the spiders let loose their webs when the flapping mosquitoes were in the vicinity. But when Han took a closer look at the movies they had recorded, it was evident that the insects never touched the webs with their protruding front legs. The spiders were capable of launching the structures even before an insect impacted the web. And when Han tried the same trick, but this time waving a tuning fork, pitched at the tone produced by the flies’ whining wings, in front of the web, the arachnids still released their webs to rocket forward. The spiders must have been listening for the approaching insects, letting loose their webs when the mosquitoes were in range, before the insect had blundered into it."

Article (like normal people newspaper style article, not a scholarly article): https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/227/23/jeb249732/363194
Paper: https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/227/23/jeb249237/363202 :OpenAccess:

#Arachnews #OpenAccess #arachnids #spiders #SpiderBehaviour • #Araneae #Theridiosomatidae

Ooh. Some cool new research on slingshot spiders (_Theridiosoma gemmosum_).

"Saad Bahmla (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA) and colleagues, including Todd Blackledge (University of Akron, USA), discovered in 2021 that they could trick the wily arachnids into releasing their ballistic nets by simply clicking their fingers. Might the weapon-wielding spiders be listening to deploy their webs even before their victims have blundered into them? Sarah Han, also from the University of Akron, and Blackledge decided to test the spiders’ reactions […]

"Sure enough, the spiders let loose their webs when the flapping mosquitoes were in the vicinity. But when Han took a closer look at the movies they had recorded, it was evident that the insects never touched the webs with their protruding front legs. The spiders were capable of launching the structures even before an insect impacted the web. And when Han tried the same trick, but this time waving a tuning fork, pitched at the tone produced by the flies’ whining wings, in front of the web, the arachnids still released their webs to rocket forward. The spiders must have been listening for the approaching insects, letting loose their webs when the mosquitoes were in range, before the insect had blundered into it."

Article (like normal people newspaper style article, not a scholarly article): https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/227/23/jeb249732/363194
Paper: https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/227/23/jeb249237/363202 :OpenAccess:

#Arachnews #OpenAccess #arachnids #spiders #SpiderBehaviour • #Araneae #Theridiosomatidae

Ooh. Some cool new research on slingshot spiders (_Theridiosoma gemmosum_).

"Saad Bahmla (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA) and colleagues, including Todd Blackledge (University of Akron, USA), discovered in 2021 that they could trick the wily arachnids into releasing their ballistic nets by simply clicking their fingers. Might the weapon-wielding spiders be listening to deploy their webs even before their victims have blundered into them? Sarah Han, also from the University of Akron, and Blackledge decided to test the spiders’ reactions […]

"Sure enough, the spiders let loose their webs when the flapping mosquitoes were in the vicinity. But when Han took a closer look at the movies they had recorded, it was evident that the insects never touched the webs with their protruding front legs. The spiders were capable of launching the structures even before an insect impacted the web. And when Han tried the same trick, but this time waving a tuning fork, pitched at the tone produced by the flies’ whining wings, in front of the web, the arachnids still released their webs to rocket forward. The spiders must have been listening for the approaching insects, letting loose their webs when the mosquitoes were in range, before the insect had blundered into it."

Article (like normal people newspaper style article, not a scholarly article): https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/227/23/jeb249732/363194
Paper: https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/227/23/jeb249237/363202 :OpenAccess:

#Arachnews #OpenAccess #arachnids #spiders #SpiderBehaviour • #Araneae #Theridiosomatidae

Ooh. Some cool new research on slingshot spiders (_Theridiosoma gemmosum_).

"Saad Bahmla (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA) and colleagues, including Todd Blackledge (University of Akron, USA), discovered in 2021 that they could trick the wily arachnids into releasing their ballistic nets by simply clicking their fingers. Might the weapon-wielding spiders be listening to deploy their webs even before their victims have blundered into them? Sarah Han, also from the University of Akron, and Blackledge decided to test the spiders’ reactions […]

"Sure enough, the spiders let loose their webs when the flapping mosquitoes were in the vicinity. But when Han took a closer look at the movies they had recorded, it was evident that the insects never touched the webs with their protruding front legs. The spiders were capable of launching the structures even before an insect impacted the web. And when Han tried the same trick, but this time waving a tuning fork, pitched at the tone produced by the flies’ whining wings, in front of the web, the arachnids still released their webs to rocket forward. The spiders must have been listening for the approaching insects, letting loose their webs when the mosquitoes were in range, before the insect had blundered into it."

Article (like normal people newspaper style article, not a scholarly article): https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/227/23/jeb249732/363194
Paper: https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/227/23/jeb249237/363202 :OpenAccess:

#Arachnews #OpenAccess #arachnids #spiders #SpiderBehaviour • #Araneae #Theridiosomatidae

Went down to the lake this afternoon to hang out with the _Pardosa_ wolf spiders. Young spiders, females with egg sacs, females with babies, mature males courting—everyone's out and enjoying the sun!

#DailySpiderPic #SpidersOfMastodon #spiders #WolfSpiders #Araneae #Lycosidae #SpiderBehaviour

A ballooning wolf spider from down by the lake the other day! I like how in the third picture you can see its little claws hanging on to the silk strung between a gap in the railing.

#ArthroBeauty #DailySpiderPic #SpidersOfMastodon #spiders #Araneae #Lycosidae #SpiderBehaviour

#Arachtober 10: from back in June, a mesh-web weaver (family Dictynidae) back-combing a line of silk to turn it into a fuzz of nanofibres. Spiders like this have a special sieve-like silk-making organ called a cribellum. This in fact is the ancestral state of most spiders.

Cribellate silk doesn't use glue; rather, it melds with the waxy compounds on some insect exoskeletons. It doesn't stick very well to other surfaces. Later in spider evolution, spiders developed other types of silk that could catch different insects and support more ambitious aerial webs. However, for a minority of spiders, cribellate silk still works just fine.

More details in this 2017 paper: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2017.0363 :OpenAccess:

#DailySpiderVid #arachnids #spiders #Araneae #Dictynidae #SpiderSilk #SpiderBehaviour #OpenAccess

#SpiderSunday: a running crab spider (family Philodromidae) guarding an egg sac nestled among pine needles. I mostly find small orbweavers like _Zygiella_ at the tips of the pine branches so this was a pleasant surprise.

#ArthroBeauty #DailySpiderPic #spiders #SpiderBehaviour #Araneae #Philodromidae

In other news, it's orbweaver mating season. Always a drawn-out and tentative process. These are a _Larinioides_ couple, the larger female on the left, male on the right.

#ArthroBeauty #DailySpiderPic #arachnids #spiders #orbweavers #Araneae #Araneidae #SpiderBehaviour