Talk:Spider/Archive 1

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Why does the tetragnathid photo partially cover the family list? I just got back to this page and after looking at the link from "funnel-web spider", which took me to Sydney Funnel-web spider (not a member of the family Agelenidae) I thought I'd better edit this to fit the proper taxonomic placement (Sydney Funnel-web Tarantulas are deadly, no agelenid is- although the bite of Hobo spiders can cause necrosis) so I changed the tital to the admittedly artificial araneomorph funnel-web spider for the agelenids. I will try to clean up a few more common names that look very odd, as in the Dictynidae. There may be an arguement for dropping some of the families, however this list, which is largely mine, includes only about half of the spider families and contains all of the common families, plus a few that are included because they are unusual or odd (such as ogre-faced spiders, which are often featured on nature programs on TV). Others, such as diguetids or zorocratids (addmittedly odd desert-dwelling spiders) could be of limited interest and be deletid. -Richman


Why does the tetragnathid photo partially cover the family list? What browser are you using? WormRunner 03:47, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Internet Explorer -Richman 06:53 MST, 9 Jan 2004

Hmm. I don't usually use windows, so it took a while to check, but it looks normal in IE on an XP box and in the other browsers I have tried... WormRunner 19:55, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)
P0M: I have checked this phenomenon out pretty thoroughly. It seems to be a question of the age of the browsers. It does the same kind of thing when I use an old Netscape on my Mac. The same Mac sees it without problems when running Sahara. I forget whether it works correctly with IE on my Mac.

The link to web goes to world wide web - can someone with more advanced skills than me offer readers the option of spider web or WWW? - David Stewart 11:39 29 May 2003 (UTC)

How Technocentric. That page should definitely should be a disambiguation page. --Menchi 12:23 29 May 2003 (UTC)
I've tried to create a Disambiguation page, but this is the first I've created and cannot be sure I've done it correctly... can someone tell me if I made a mistake? Camster342 17:59 30 May 2003 (UTC)
Your first of many successes! Congrats, you've done a fine job. --Menchi 18:19 30 May 2003 (UTC)

The taxonomy information is in agreement with the source quoted, but it appears not to be very complete. See: http://www.agr.hr/hed/hrv/ento/inventar/liste/aranea.htm I see that the second authority adds a Sub-order (Entelegynae), and that it puts Latrodectus in that sub-order rather than in Labidognatha. I realize that these categorizations are bound to be fluid, but what should be the standard? Do we need to list all of the Families? It would not seem to make sense to have only Families for which we happen to have genus/species entries. But listing the names of all spiders would definitely be going too far. -- Patrick0Moran

Hey there, welcome to the wikipedia! I originally added the taxonomy based on the ITIS reference. Others have noted that ITIS is sometimes incomplete and/or inaccurate for certain groups. I suspect because it attempts to do all groups and is not specialised, it can be inaccurate with respect to a more specialised taxonomy. Basically, feel free to change it based on a taxonomy closer to that recognised by spider experts, such as the link you quote above. We should list as many families as possible, but I think it's best to list families and not worry so much about these intermediate classifications (such as suborders), if they get in the way. When it comes to listing individual species within a family, you don't want to list them all, but it is sometimes useful to have a well-known or common representative species listed by its common name in brackets after the family name. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life for more details. --Lexor 07:31 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I had a look at ITIS, trying to reconcile its categories with the ones that I found on the other site. I could find hardly any of the spiders that others have already listed. Somebody who edits that set of pages has access to better materials, but it's a mystery to me where s/he gets them.

I agree that some of the intermediate classifications are just adding confusion there. I think that I will remove some of them. They can always be put back in if they are actually helping to organize anything. As it is, there would really need to be a third level of indentation to accomodate them.


Thanks for your help.

Patrick0Moran 14:21 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)Patrick0Moran 14:21 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)

It should be noted that the article text states spiders are divided into three suborders, Mygalomorphae, Araneomorphae, and Mesothelae. This currently exists alongside the different division in the taxobox without comment, which is confusing. This is the system I recall from textual sources, and some quick searching indicates that it is the one currently in use, supported by phylogeny. If we can get a good family list, I think we should use it, and then make notes where older systems differ. The world spider catalog may be useful here - I think in the taxonomic list the Mygalomorphae correspond to families 2-17, and the Araneomorphae to families 18+.

What happened to this page? On my computer, at least, the first paragraph has been reduced to the width of about 1 inch. -- Patrick0Moran 04:58, 29 Jul 2003 (UTC)

What browser are you using and what platform? It looks fine for me, I'm running Mozilla. Wikipedia underwent a new updated look and feel which affects all pages (but not the content), which might be a reason for the change, read about some of the changes on the test wikipedia: http://test.wikipedia.org/. -- Lexor 07:07, 29 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Patrick, this information is great, but the taxo box is getting way too big. Taxo boxes should only have one (at most two sublevels), right now we have suborder, family, and genus and it's getting huge, and it's difficult to tell what the taxonomic level of each name is.

We should at most have the family levels and move the genus information to separate pages for each family. See the Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life for standards, templates for each level and examples. -- Lexor 08:09, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Also information like "Downward pointing, daggerlike fangs, spinnerettes located near center of the abdomen, segmented abdomen" should go in the article for that suborder/family and not in the taxobox itself. -- Lexor 08:11, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Agreed, the taxobox is way too large, particularly due to the large amount of indentation. Possibly some of this hierarchical stuff can be moved out into the main article? Or possibly a separate article. I'm not sure what the recommendations on these are. -- Wapcaplet 22:38, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I think maybe the best choice is to just drop out everything except the Families and their common names. (We started with Families with the occasional "Black Widow" or other sample common name.) I agree that there is too much detail. On top of that, the categories are indeed fluid. Evidently what has happened over the years, judging by the terminology used, is that people began to see relations between apparently very different creatures like the virtually immobile nearly blind lurking crab spiders and the highly mobile clear visioned jumping spiders and so put them into a super-family together or put them into a sub-order together. I found one site with clear diagrams of competing forms of "outlining" the whole system. The information, such as the connection between crab spiders and jumping spiders, could be useful. The names of the super-families and/or sub-orders, however, seem to be as issue for experts to argue over -- one case where the facts are fairly clear and the "what to call it issues" are problematical.
If we put the detail in another page, what would we call it? -- Patrick0Moran
Create new (stub) pages for each (major) family and put the detail in there, that way we are recreating the hierarchy as per the Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life. You could use the common name for the family name and #REDIRECT the scientific name there, like Aranea -> Spider. -- Lexor 01:56, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I will recheck consistency issues once more. (That's one reason why I wanted to have a common name for each of the Families -- otherwise it's extremely difficult to tell what is going one. I would like to have a picture of a representative member of each group.) -- Patrick0Moran

About pictures, I can make many of them from spiders in my area. In some cases, such as the Brazilian Wandering Spider, there is no way I can get one. If we use external links, however, they are very likely to disappear on us. If I write to somebody who has a good picture and they write back that it's o.k. to put a copy on Wikipedia, then there are two questions: (1) What if they or their estate comes back later and say, "I didn't send that e-mail." (In other words, what is good evidence.) (2) Where does the evidence get stored?

Temporarily I'll just cut out the details but leave the order of mention. -- Patrick0Moran 16:12, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Each image page has a corresponding Image_talk page that that information can be stored, as for how "good" it is, I don't know. -- Lexor 01:56, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Now that Lexor has reformatted the taxonomy, this page is looking pretty good. In comparison with some encyclopedia entries on spiders that I have seen, it is extremely good. This kind of page should be a good resource for, e.g., people in a recently war-ravaged nation who need to come up with new textbooks without buying stuff at U.S. prices. Presumably they could just copy what they want, translate, and print it at local prices. (A single U.S. book could cost the equivalent of a policeman's salary for a month or more in Afghanistan.)

Patrick0Moran 05:47, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Contents

UK Spiders

"Many cold and temperate parts of the world, including the
United Kingdom, are free from any spiders which are capable of
inflicting any painful bite in normal circumstances"

This appears to be untrue, as I live in the United Kingdom and have been painfully bitten before by a spider. It was not a spider with visable pincers, but perhaps someone can provide an alternative explanation?

It is untrue, and I thought I had fixed that kind of assertion long ago. I guess it crept back in. There are spiders in the UK that are specifically regarded as "problem biters," i.e., spiders whose bite produces considerable discomfort. If I remember correctly, the problem genus is Dolomedes.
It is also untrue in a more general sense: Even the normally non-aggressive jumping spiders, some of which may willingly explore one's hand and jump to one's camera lense, can give quite a painful bite, about as painful as the sting of a honey bee. I am normally very careful (but sometimes not careful enough) not to provoke a defensive bite, but any spider that bites and injects venom will produce a painful bite as far as I know. Sometimes spiders give "dry bites", defensive bites that are not accompanied by the expression of venom. Those bites might not hurt very much if the spider is small enough. On the other hand some of the large tarantulas can give a dry bite that is about as much fun as the "dry bite" of a hamster.
The fact that most spiders are not inclined to bite does not prove that most spiders are unable to bite. And even the extremely venomous spiders sometimes have ranges that extend to areas that freeze during wintertime, so it is hard to make a useful statement about the geographical limits of spiders that produce problem bites.
Why don't you just go ahead and delete that passage? P0M 21:23, 6 September 2005 (UTC)


Thanks for the excellent answer - I have deleted the passage in question and expanded my own knowlage - thanks again!
Regarding visible mouth parts -- I am currently keeping a full-grown black widow. After you wrote your first message I happened to feed it a moth that was about its own size. I noticed two things: (1) She was extremely careful of how she approached the struggling moth. She didn't just rush in and bite, but spent five minutes or so getting battered about as she gradually managed to wrap enough threads of silk around it to tie its wings down. When she did bite, she cautiously got a grip on one of the wings and bit along the outer edge. I'm guessing that there is an arterial channel there that can communicate venom to the rest of the moth's body fairly rapidly. (2) I could see the spider's pedipalps quite easily, but the chelicerae and the fangs that are on their ends were extremely difficult to see even under magnification -- smaller than the tips of any sewing or hypodermic needles I've ever seen. The chelicera and its fang is structured something like a jack knife and its blade -- the actual fang is generally concealed unless the spider makes a deliberate threat display. So I'm not surprised that you couldn't see fangs on the spider that bit you. P0M 15:16, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Image:Spider_chelicera_&_fang.gif

Carlsen Ranch?

This business with the "Carlsen Ranch" (broken link), widow spiders, and male genitalia seems pretty fishy to me. Can anyone verify this statistic somehow? Sounds like a joke or urban legend.

Update: I removed the statistic. There's no reason to believe the "Carlsen Ranch" should be an expert on spider bite statistics and the web site no longer exists.

yellow spider with black spikes

Help, I found a spiked spider in my garden and can not identify it. Can you help me? It's body was 1/2" long, head and mid-section and legs reddish brown, but it's abdomen was neon yellow with bright orange spots and black shiny spikes of various sizes. I have a picture that I can e-mail if you want. My e-mail address is cactus2238@Yahoo.com. I'm concerned that this alien looking creature may be poisonous to me or my pets. I did not harm it in any way and let it spin it's web on my Butterfly bush. It has moved on now, but I still would love to find out what it was. Thanks for any help you can give me.

It sounds stunning. Rest assured that it won't come after you or your pets. There are large web weavers all over my place and I frequently crash through a web in the dark. Even if they land on me, the spiders are just anxious to get off and away from this big brute. I suppose if one went down my collar I might pinch it and get a little bite, but the only web weavers in the U.S. with bad bites are the black widows, and they build very close to the ground -- usually in a shed or under an overturned wheelbarrow or someplace like that. Cats sometimes watch black widows, but for some reason they don't swat at them.

Patrick0Moran 02:04, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Is this it? It's Funnel web weavers (Family Agelenidae)? --Menchi 01:06, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I found a better picture, it doesn't seem to fit the description: [1] -- Tim Starling 01:18, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Could it be a Black-and-Yellow Argiope? [2] -- Tim Starling 01:30, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I e-mailed "Cactus," but have received no reply. I found a spider of the Argiope genus [3] but there was no identification with it that I could easily find. This one has the yellow with red or orange spots. I don't know about being "neon" yellow, and I'm not sure about the "spikes". Many spiders have the "spikes" on their legs like those that are very clear on Menchi's example. Tim's example also has small round red dots. I couldn't be sure until I discovered I could double-click on the image and get a larger one. I also had a look at some pix that I made recently, and it confirmed my impression that the Argiope genus does not have the "spikes" mentioned -- unless Cactus meant the legs, which are generally disposed in a very angular (spikey?) way. Also, half an inch is too small to be a mature Argiope, and I think they must all be mature by now as frost is not far away and they should be laying eggs about now.

Maybe "Cactus" will revisit this page and tell us whether any of these URLs leads to his/her spider.

And Tim's spider is not the "black-and-yellow" it's:

Common Name: Yellow Garden Spider

Scientific Name: Argiope aurantia Lucas

Patrick0Moran 03:52, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I managed to track down the name associated with the spider picture I found, but it's Argiope aurantia too, despite the fact that it does not look much like Tim's spider.

Patrick0Moran 04:33, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

"Cactus" sent me a jpg. It was Micrathena sagitta, the orb web weaving spider that is a kind of organic jewel with pointed tubercles on the abdomen. Patrick0Moran 01:01, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

So it wasn't this (spiney orb weaver spider)? I can't find a good image of a yellow one, but I've seen them in bright yellow before. One thing that stands out about the ones I've seen is that the long support strands of their webs have thickened areas, making those strands more visible than the rest of the web. Jon the Geek 19:08, Sep 1, 2004 (UTC)

No, I ran the i.d. past an expert and also found an identical photo in the Golden Book of Spiders. Once I got the photo it was not hard to get clear on it. Your photo is lots closer than many of the other guesses, but not the same spider. P0M 05:13, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

...so, you found out what it is? What? :p This [4], maybe? ¦ Reisio 02:57, 2005 July 22 (UTC)
Right. As I said above, I found an identical spider. Actually I had seen Micrathena sagitta before. It didn't take me long to confirm what it was. The problem was trying to imagine the spider from his verbal description. One look at the picture he sent me cleared lots of confusion about exactly what was "spikey". Same as the spider whose URL you sent me. If I've seen them before, I can track them down again. BTW I've got one on Wikipedia Commons. Click the commons link on the bottom of Spider and then look at mystery spider. It was a tiny little thing, and was not always cooperative about looking into the camera lens so I might have a shot at getting a picture of its eyes. (A valuable tool for identifying spiders.) And unfortunately although I thought it couldn't climb glass it got away somehow. P0M 03:24, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
...so what is the name of the spider? ¦ Reisio 03:46, 2005 July 22 (UTC)
I don't know. Have a look: Image:Gold_green_red_spider.jpg.

Can anyone tell me how to keep the words from the original essay from bleeding into the table on this page? I updated the list of families based on Platnick's 2003 World Spider Catalog and than discovered that now the text and table were partially overlaping. I think that this ends my edits at this point as the original author did a really good job generally- just needed a few taxonomic tweeks!--Richman 27 September 2003 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "bleeding into the table". Perhaps it's a browser issue but I just checked on three browsers and can't see anything overlapping. If that is occuring on some browsers then the only solution might be to ensure that the text of the article does not start until after the table, perhaps by puttin <div style="float:right"> before the table and </div> after it. Angela 14:50, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I've seen this phenomenon many times on Wikipedia pages, but only when using my old Netscape 4.x versions. So I agree that it is a browser issue. If it is a serious problem for users then it would need to be addressed at a systems level, i.e., whoever maintains the software that governs Wikipedia behavior.

Thanks to Richman for working on the families issue. I messed with it for a while and know that it is a mess as various people refer to taxonomic schemes current in different years or decades.

Patrick0Moran 15:18, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Thanks Angela and Patrick. Sorry about originally posting to the start of the Talk section. You can see that I'm new to this. I should have guessed that it was my browser. I hve a alighnment problem on viewing my own webpages at work which no body else sees! The way it showed up on my screen just looked weird, with the words from the text merging into the table of families. By the way, I'm using Microsoft Internet Explorer- mainly because I kept having problems with Netscape and after Windows 98 completely crashed and burned I gave in and used Microsoft.

The families of spiders have been a bit of a problem. I know that I and the rest of the committee that is revising Roth's Spider Genera of North America (now to be called Spiders of North America) have gone back and forth on a few problem families (mostly in the former Clubionidae)and finally settled on Platnick's World Spider Catalog (2003) as our standard.--Richman 27 September 2003 (UTC)

I've tweaked the taxonomy table a little, just a format change. It can be reverted if it causes problems for a different set of browsers, but it may help those of us using older or crankier browsers. Patrick0Moran 18:01, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I've been getting pictures of the more common spiders. I think it would be better to have our own pictures, and I've made pictures of whatever I can find around here. (I've got a huntsman on order, so will have a picture of that kind soon.)

Right now I would like to find our own black widow, filmy dome spider, hackled orbweaver, lynx spider, and spitting spider pictures. At the moment we don't even have external links. Our own Sydney funnel-web, crab spider, Brazilian wandering spider, and yellow sac spider pictures would be better in the long run since any of these links could go dead without notice.

I guess my idea is to supply reference images of each of the main families that people are likely to have questions about. We definitely should have pictures of the dangerous spiders, and it would be a good idea to have pictures of any spiders that may look threatening to people. It might be a good idea to do some kind of an inventory of pictures available on some of the better sites. The University of Nebraska has some good pictures, but not in all categories.

In years past I've been able to find a black widow by picking up any piece of junk in the yard that had enough space under it to make a web possible, but this year I haven't seen a single one.

Patrick0Moran 06:25, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Was your wasp population up this year? Some wasps, especially organ pipe wasps (AKA "blue devils" AKA "mud daubers" feed on spiders. You can encourage these gentle wasps by providing some clay under a dripping faucet.

P0M: You may well be right. At my "new" place there are mud dauber nests and the like all over the place.

Unidentified jumping spider

Contributor Pollinator put a picture of a jumping spider into the wolf spider article, and asked whether that was where it belonged. I moved it to the talk page for the wolf spider article. It's clearly a jumping spider. Can anyone identify which kind it actually is? (It's just a trifle out of focus, a side view. I think it may be my favorite kind of jumping spider, but I can't see the pattern on its back.)

Here it is on the right:

Image:Wolf spider 3411.JPG

Not a Wolf spider, but a jumping spider
Hemingway, South Carolina

P0M 01:39, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It's been a while, but I'm guessing some kind of Metaphidippus. I'd bet that's a nice mahogany-colored pattern on the abdomen.

Unidentified Indonesian spider?

unknown spider
Enlarge
unknown spider

Anyone know what this spider on the left is? I spotted it in Indonesia, it's leg-span was about one and a half times the size of my (large) hand. Thanks, Mark Richards 04:29, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[P0M:] That would mean that the body is about 2 inches long? The large version of the photo shows clearly that it is an orb weaver. P0M 06:08, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It could have been, I didn't measure, but that seems about right, perhaps a little smaller. Thanks! BTW I have a higher res if it's any help. Mark Richards 06:23, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[P0M:] It may be Nephila maculata. You could check Google for Nephila and then tab to "images". Your spider maintains a heads down position on its web, the web seems to be very neat in the lower left part of the image but sketchy elsewhere. Many of the Nephila pictures resemble your spider, but not perfectly. For Nephila maculata see http://www.wettropics.gov.au/pa/pa_weavers.html P0M 12:17, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks - it looks like a lot of them, but not close enough that I'd want to say for sure - shame - I was hoping to post it somewhere here - ah well, will keep looking! Mark Richards 22:41, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

There appear to be 4-5 described species of Nephila in Indonesia. From the size I suspect it is one of the variants of N. pilipes (= maculata). There are several variants (called subspecies in Platnick's catalog). This also appears to be a gravid female, which can alter appearances somewhat.

Richman


[P0M:] Thank you!

[P0M:] I think we can work the picture is as "Nephila sp." and give readers some useful information. It's not like I can find one in my pasture to photograph. P0M 05:59, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

What do you think? [[5]] (tetragnathid article) P0M

The more I look at it the more I think that it is Nephila pilipes (or maculata as some forms were called in the past) also known as the giant wood spider. This is the largest of the members of the genus Nephila and is fairly variable in appearance, with the marks on the underside of the legs varrying from yellow to reddish. The bright yellow of the markings on the legs of this individual plus the large size makes me think that this is indeed a female of N. pilipes. It is a nice photo, superior to most of the photos of this species on the internet.

Richman

I'll let that page stay pretty much as it is, then. On my browser the pictures overlap, so I'll use Mac OS X and try to get it fixed up. P0M 02:56, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

A recent reversion

§ An unidentified user inserted an assertion to the effect that there are no spiders in Great Britain capable of biting human beings. Whenever somebody says "never" s/he assumes an incredible burden of proof. So I reverted the article and then found a very good list of spiders that have been identified as native to Great Britain and added that at the bottom of the article. One can very easily establish whether any spiders known to be "problem biters" are on that list. It is another thing to say that any kind of spider never bites people. It is often difficult to know whether something that falls on your neck in the garden and bites you was a spider or something else, so spiders can get blamed for other kinds of bites and vice-versa. The American spider researcher, McCook tried all his life to get spiders to bite him, but only succeeded one time. (Crompton, Life of the Spider, p. 101) That does not mean that spiders cannot bite, just that many of them are disinclined to bite and will bite only under very special circumstances. P0M 21:11, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

§ I just found evidence: Great Britain has the "water spider" Argyroneta aquatica (http://www.wbrc.org.uk/WorcRecd/Issue9/watspidr.htm)and is identified at http://www.xs4all.nl/~ednieuw/Spiders/Argyronetidae/Argyronetidae.htm (among other places) as a spider whose bite is to be avoided. P0M 23:18, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

You're right, of course, and your new edit is more appropriate. There are various UK spiders which are alleged to bite, but very few actual proven cases of one doing so effectively - although plenty of accusations. Another candidate is Dysdera crocata which is occasionally described as biting in literature referring to other countries, but never, to my knowledge, so described in the UK, despite wide distribution. Steatoda nobilis is naturalised in S England, and is known to bite, see This slightly sensationalist BBC news story Naturenet 08:54, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Question: Are spiders territorial?

How do spiders interact with each other? I didn't see this covered in the article, but I was wondering about this, after observing spiders in a tunnel. The tunnel gets cleaned out regularly, but afterwards the prime spot next to the light is always grabbed by a big spider. I've never seen spiders having a fight. Do they ever do this? Do they ever go on another spider's web? Are they territorial? -- Nojer2 08:00, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It's probably too in-depth to put into the article but most spiders are not territorial in the sense that vertebrates often are. There are spiders that live together and co-operate, but these are unusual. The large majority are quite independent. Spiders certainly do fight, and indeed W. S. Bristowe in 'The World of Spiders' asserts that "the main food of spiders is... spiders". This aggressive tendency might cause some quasi-territorial behaviour in that spiders would tend to fight if they met each other, so they might by default spread themselves out over the available space. Some spiders specialise in taking prey from other spiders webs, or even attacking other spiders and taking over their webs. Naturenet 09:12, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Defending a web would certainly qualify as territorial, with the web as the territory. For most of the spiders I'm familiar with, though, they move around so much trying to hit the jackpot for prey availability, I rather doubt they establish and defend a fixed territory.

Fact and reference check

There is a project to cross reference all the facts on Wikipedia. There is a spider example up if you feel like cross referencing the article with books or other sources you might possess.

Hopefully if the tab structure, currently based on comment tabs, gets programmed into Wikipedia to autogenerate the quotations below it will make this run faster. Also make your own examples on how the reference layout would be best in your opinion.

swapped out one external link

I found a very reputable site, the Entomology Department at UCR, that evaluates the dangers of various kinds of spider venom. It points to the dangers of black widows, and then stresses that the widow spiders only bite as a last resort. It accurately points to the kind of damage that can occur from the brown recluse spiders, mentions the other spiders that produce more than temporary discomfort, and notes the few venomous spiders that do bite with little provocation. The site I swapped out has pictures of alleged jumping spider bite lesions. They admit that jumping spiders are the supposed culprits. The bites show the kind of necrosis that occurs with brown recluse bites. Having been painfully bitten a couple of times by jumping spiders I can testify that those bites didn't even leave a visible bite mark. The sensation and the appearance of the bite was pretty much what one would expect from a bee sting. None of the researchers on the salticidae that I have read have suggested anything more than the occasional defensive bite, and none have suggested more than a period of discomfort resulting from the bites. So rather than risk encouraging needless fear, I have removed the link to that site. P0M 09:10, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It's tough to evaluate 'spider bites', even for the pros. Too many variables: take necrosis - protein (allergic) reaction? adventitious bacteria? was it something from the spider, or something unique to the "bitee"? and that's assuming it actually was a spider and not something else like a centipede or some other arthropod. In many years of spider encounters I've managed to get bit only twice - lying down on some theridiid (barely felt it), and (waking up) swatting a large Dolomedes that was hunting in my sleeping bag (hurt and swelled like a bee sting). That doesn't mean that some 'harmless' spiders aren't potentially dangerous, though. I think given the usefulness of the rest of the information, leaving the link with a little explanatory blurb might have been better.

request added from archive

Request Clarification of Text

Under anatomy, the following paragraph:

Book lungs alone, respiratory organs with openings on the ventral surface of the abdomen, enrich the blood of primitive mygalomorph spiders with oxygen, and araneomorph spiders use spiracles as well. The latter are much more efficient and allow more advanced characteristics to be displayed, such as cursorial hunting (hunting involving rapid pursuit).

..fails to make much sense to me.

Could it be changed as follows, or have I misunderstood it?

--

Spiders need to oxygenate their hemolymph (arthropod blood). Three solutions to this problem are employed:

1) Most spiders breath with book lungs

2) The more primitive mygalomorph spiders use respiratory organs with openings on the ventral surface of the abdomen instead.

3) Araneomorph spiders use spiracles in addition to (2). Spiracles are more efficient, and allow more advanced characteristics to be displayed, such as cursorial hunting (hunting involving rapid pursuit).

--

Perhaps someone who knows their stuff could make an appropriate edit?

Cheers!

Huge spider in southwestern Washington

In southwestern Washington state, we occasionally find spiders in basements, garages, and other similar areas that have the basic body plan of a brown recluse or even some sort of wolf-spider. They can be tan, grey, or black, sometimes shades inbetween or in combinations (such as grey with tan legs) and sometimes have patterns (such as grey with black blotches on the abdomen or tan with grey stripes on the legs). They see very well and chase down their prey, like wolf-spiders. They're about the size of a tarantula, but with smaller bodies and longer legs. The biggest I've seen would have been about 8 or more inches wide with its legs spread out, and had a 3 inch-long body. In addition to running down their prey, they make webs in corners to hide behind and ambush creatures as large as mice and small birds. They also tend to drop down on strands of webbing from heights, despite their large size, but for some reason seem to have a lot of trouble crawling on vertical surfaces and are incapable/unwilling to walk on ceilings.

I'm guessing that you mean proportionately smaller bodies and proportionately longer legs. No wolf spider I know of is of the size you mention. Making webs to hide behind is a little unclear. It sounds like you are talking about some kind of funnel-web spider, a spider whose web has also been described as a kind of trampoline. The funnel part can be just a little tunnel leading to a nook where they hide. Tarantulas will web the ground right around their shelter or tunnel.

If anyone saw the movie Arachnophobia, the smallest of these things look like the numerous spiders that crawled all over the place in that movie, only these can be, but are not always, very much larger and come in different colors. I saw the majority of them while working as a janitor one summer, when they kept "popping out" in the downstairs locker room (which was converted from an old basement) about 3 or 4 times per week.

I've tried asking my local college's biology instructor and some dude who said he used to work for fish and wildlife, but according to them the spiders in this area don't get anywhere near that large (someone should inform the spiders of this). It appears it's yet another one of those arthropods that supposedly "doesn't exist" in this area, like the violin spider, but if anyone has any idea what it might be, I'd appreciate any information. --Corvun 23:39, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A leg span of 8 inches is absolutely huge, but not impossible. There are Huntsman spiders that have a leg span of 10 inches, but in general Huntsman spiders are very agile on vertical surfaces, even glass. Wolf spiders can't climb glass and I don't think I've ever noticed one climbing a vertical surface. Tarantulas can make it up glass, and will hang upside down (but probably only if they can get a really good grip on something like a branch). Some of the tarantulas are arboreal.
The varying colors and sizes you mention make it unlikely that you were observing a single species. Males and females can be significantly different in appearance in certain species of spiders. The only way you are going to get an identification is to get a photo of some of these creatures and send us digitized pictures. If possible, your photo should include something of known size.
One species of Huntsman spider has made its way around the world. For some reason it is a good traveller. I have observed the same species in the Southwest of the U.S. and in Osaka, Japan. Last year I bought a specimen from Florida. So it would not be hard to imagine that some of them could have made it to Washington state. They are sort of a dull tan color. They are large, but one with a 4 inch leg span would be a whopper.
If it's something with an 8 inch legspan, it's highly unlikely that it is native to Washington or some eager spider enthusiast would have noticed it by now. Maybe some tarantula enthusiast had a bunch of imported tarantulas that got loose. Get us osme pictures! P0M 00:39, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
As soon as I get my hands on a digital camera, I'll be certain to try and hunt some of these things down. It shouldn't be that difficult. I blame the (proprotionately) longer legs on the one that seemed to have the 8-inch legspan. Though I can't be really sure of that, as I wasn't willing to get close enough to pull its legs flat and measure it with a ruler. The way it was standing, its legspan was maybe five and a half to six inches. But like many other arthropods in this area, it stood much more "upright" than typical spiders do (our cockroaches are the same, I assume it has something to do with the damp climate).


Spiders are good at changing their postures. My tarantula could rest her body on the ground (or, her favorite, the cap from a 2-liter soda pop bottle), but she could also elevate her body an inch or so. I think I remember seeing spiders "stand up" when moving through a patch of ants. Water standing on the ground would do it too.
It's also very possible I was seeing two different or maybe three species. Some were mostly tan to grey in color with obvious markings/patterns, others were brown to black and nearly solid-colored. One in particular was light grey with tan legs and very dark grey patches on its abdomen, and that was the really enormous one I mentioned. I've only ever seen one of those and that's while I was tearing apart an old garage, so I suppose it's possible it could have been anything from a non-native come over in a fruit shipment to someone's pet that had gotten loose. It was extremely exotic looking. The others that had similar color patterns were much smaller, with legspans probably "only" around four inches.
The darker, more solid-colored ones are the ones I've seen the most of. They have the same body plan, but were a little bit more sprawled in posture. These were the ones I observed catching mice and small birds. To elaborate on the webs: very simple-looking and opaque, almost like cloth. They tended to be in dark corners and formed a "bunker"-like construction. The spiders had just barely enough room to squeeze themselves between the web and the wall behind it. Now I don't know much about bugs, but that doesn't seem like the behavior of a species that's well-adapted to its surroundings. These I only ever saw at the country club where my janitorial job was, and so its possible they were coming over during the summer from eastern Washington or even Oregon in people's golf bags, and then dying off in the fall or winter. Why there would be so many of them, how such a large number could remain unnoticed during travel, and why they appeared on such a consistant basis is beyond my limited knowledge.
Do a Google search for "huntsman spider heteropoda" and then select "images" to get just a selection of spider images. Heteropoda venatoria is the versatile spider that seems to get around quite a lot. You will see many different postures in pictures of this spider. On top of that, they are known for being able to fit into spaces with very low "ceilings." One other thing about these Huntsman spiders -- they run like crazy in straight lines. Wolf spiders will run a short distance, pause, get their bearings, run, pause to check everything out, run... The Huntsman will run for a couple of feet or maybe more without pausing.
All of these spiders (which I'll assume for the moment are 3 separate species) had large, clearly visible mouth parts. The tan-to-grey ones tended to have very slender mouth parts, while the darker ones had orb-shaped mouth parts, which is why I was thinking they were a single species. The largest mouth parts in porportion to body size were the ones that belonged to the smaller, darker-colored spiders. They also had extremely large fangs that were clearly visible from as far as 15 feet away. These in particular were porportioned very much like the picture of the wolf spider here on Wikipedia, and the legs were oriented similarly, but less sprawled. These were fast, agile, and seemed to have good eyesight. So I'm sure you can see how a laymen like me would think "wolf spider".
I think the largest one in the U.S. is the "Carolina wolf spider," which has a body of around 1" long, so a leg span or 3-4 inches I guess. There are other spiders (see, for instance, my user page, just click on my link. P0M) that are large and are similar in general appearance to the wolf spiders. A good way to find spiders that you have seen is the Golden Book on spiders.
Most of the time the fangs of spiders are hidden by their pedipalps. Spiders have 8 legs and another two "legs" that don't reach the ground. These body parts are ordinarily used to help the spider manipulate its food as it is eating. The fangs are two-part structures that go together kind of the way a two-part pruning saw folds into its handle. Normally you will not be able to see all of the fangs, you just see the "handle" part, and the blade is folded out of sight. But when a spider makes a threat display it holds the pedipalps up out of the way and folds the business end of its fangs down so that you can see what it has ready for you. Having the pedipalps of any of the spiders with a one-inch or larger body be visible at 15 feet would not be unusual.
As far as I know, spiders in Washington and northern Oregon aren't supposed to get that large. Although I'm sure all of us have at one time or another seen an insect or arachnid that was much larger than the others in the area. The place I saw these darker-colored spiders seemed to also be home to a number of insects that were much, much larger than those in nearby locales.
Are you close to a port? There are all sorts of spiders that get called "bananna spiders" because they come in on shipments of fruit from tropical areas. Those include the "Brazilian wandering spider" which can be deadly if she actually injects venom when she bites. (Many of their bites are said to be "dry," i.e., the spider bites and if you let her go she doesn't waste her venom on you.) Heteropoda venatoria probably gets around that way too. They are very different spiders, the Huntsman being known to bite people occasionally (probably from a distance they mistake your finger for a large bug and then rush over so fast to bite that they don't figure out that the finger has a large mammal attached to it), but the bite is not life threatening. Probably any large spider that wanders in from outside and sits on a bunch of banannas will get called a bananna spider if someone gets scared by it. But your chances of finding a bananna spider in S.F. are much higher than they are in Death Valley.
Anyway -- do these fit the description of too many spiders in Washington and Oregon, or so few that I should be genuinely concerned about catching one to determine if it really is native or not? Are there any spiders that you know of in the northwest that fit the descriptions? --Corvun 01:38, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The professors at your local university are in a good position to know the expected range of sizes for natives. You might run a Google search for:

spiders "washington state"

and then punch the "images" button to see if you find anything similar. The articles might have information about the largest spiders. If you are asking other people for identification then you'll have to have pictures. I don't think there is a single spider that has all the characteristics that you mention. On the other hand, if you look just at single characteristics you'll almost never find a give-away characteristic like the red hourglass that marks most black widows (but not the other species of venomous widow spiders). Whether you catch the spider or not is not as important as whether you can get a good picture, preferably with a book of matches or something like that to give an indication of size. P0M 15:06, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)


I recently added sections on Liocranidae and Corinnidae to the spider families on WIKIPEDIA. Darrell Ubick and I are about finished with the revisions of the keys to North American genera in these two families (I also have been involved with keys to six other families -Salticidae, Clubionidae, Anyphaenidae, Miturgidae, Tengellidae and Zorocratidae). The keys will be added to the text for Spiders of North America -- An Identification Manual Edited by Darrell Ubick, Pierre Paquin, Paula E. Cushing, & Vince Roth, with original drawings by Nadine Dupérré, to be published by the American Arachnological Society about March in 2005. The committee overseeing this project (of which I was a member) was very lucky to get an excellent illustrator in Quebec to make the numerous drawings required in such a work. She has done a great job and the book will be a great source for anyone interested in spiders. Darrell Ubick. Pierre Paquin and Paula Cushing, among many others, have spent untold hours to this project and an anonymous donor provided money to produce the book. The book is dedicated to the late Vincent D. Roth who published three editions of his Spider Genera of North America before his death. See webpages of the American Arachnological Society for details.

I will try to get the rest of the family entries (unless somebody else wants to do them!) done over the next year as I have a fair number of references and contacts to get updated information. Then whoever wants is free to edit, add references, etc.

A HAPPY HOLIDAY TO ALL!

--Richman 15:22, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm east coast, and really don't know what's out in the wilds of the west, but some of that description sounds strikingly like our local terrestrial fishing spider - Dolomedes tenebrosus. It's like a very 'flat' wolf spider, tends to be dark and rather variable in pattern and comes in a variety of sizes over the summer, from a couple inches across to some almost as big as my hand (so about 6-7" tip-to-tip). They often hide under bark and spin a pad-like lining as a shelter. They can also move quite nippily if desired. I never saw any of them take any non-arthropod prey, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least. I've fed small toads to the big araneids around here. I suspect they'd eat almost anything that the web could hold; I doubt the wandering hunters would be any much fussier. I remember hearing some loud crunching one night, and saw what I thought was a mouse until I put my glasses on and realized it was a big female tenebrosus working on a large ground beetle of some kind.

Unidentified Spider Picture

Unidentified Mexican jungle spider
Enlarge
Unidentified Mexican jungle spider

Hi, this is a pretty awesome picture of a spider that I took at the Maya ruins of Bonampak in Chiapas, Mexico. With the hairs on her? leg, and the spots on her back, she just looks menacing. I don't know what type of spider it is, but I think it's a cool enough picture that it could be used to good effect in this article. A wikimedia commons category should probably be started on spiders. In any case, does anyone know what type of spider this is? The body was probably about 2 inches long, with a legspan of maybe 6-8 inches.

Let me know at my talk page if anyone adds this picture to any articles.

--Jacobolus 03:24, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I can't see very clearly, but it looks like she may be on an "orb" web. P0M 03:54, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This spider looks like some species of Leucauge. Try a Google check of images. P0M 17:16, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

It's a Nephila of some sort.

Considering contributing to Spiders entry

Hello. This is my first post ever to Wikipedia, so forgive me if things go awry.

I am studying spiders and plan to make reams of information available on the web. I just don't know if Wikipedia (or Wiki anything) is the right approach for me. So I'm checking with you guys here for thoughts.

Basically, I want create a brand around my name as an all-things spiders person. I'm not a scientist, but I am an obsessive writer, observer, and photographer. I want to leverage the net to help associate my name with someone who knows spiders.

Wikipedia seems like a great place to do this, except for one thing. Wikipedia entries appear to be anonymous over the long run. It seems that it only keeps records of the most recent 500 entries and doesn't make it easy for visitors to understand who the primary contributors are.

So the benefits Wikipedia seems to offer are these: getting to know other spider enthusiasts, honing my knowledge with others until we get it right, and an opportunity to learn and collect my thoughts for presentation to others. These could indirectly contribute to my brand and be helpful that way, but I still wonder if maybe posting all my articles on my own site might be more effective for driving attention my way. I've already been working on a site of my own and only recently thought seriously of the Wiki option.

Okay, so any thoughts anybody?

BTW, what made me start taking Wikipedia seriously was seeing how several urban myths were once written here and presented as fact, and then noticing weeks later that they had been eradicated and identified as myths.

Brazilian wandering spider article -- major modifications

Anyone with expertise in this area, please check the article. An anonymous contributor has added a great deal. The information may be entirely legitimate, but it is so strongly at odds with what has been known about this kind of spider up to now that it bears some double-checking. P0M 15:56, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Please help maintain Tarantula article

I have fallen into some kind of dispute with another editor who insists that the picture of my tarantula (a G. rosea according to the dealer from which I bought it and one that looks like a G. rosea to me and to the V.P. of the American Tarantula Society) is of another species. Mr. Schultz (the aforesaid V.P.) says that it is impossible to make a positive identification except by microscopic examination of a killed spider. This particular spider is dead but the body was not preserved, so that is not an option. (And I would not have consented to killing it just to settle an egocentric argument anyway.) Will people having knowledge of Tarantulas please check the article, and, if necessary try to maintain the compromise identification of "G. sp."? Thanks. P0M 02:55, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I don't know if my "vote" counts, but if they can't be distinguished except by microscopy, then there's no reason not to have the picture, but you may want to just give the genus name. I don't know nearly enough to settle the scientific aspect of the dispute, however. Dave (talk)
That is what I had already done. Stan Shultz thought it was most likely G. rosea, but there is no way to prove it, so I agree with your way of handling it. P0M 06:38, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

New pictures, but what is the genus and species

I have photographed some very interesting spiders that life communally at the tip top of trees that reach up to second-story level. It ordinarily would be difficult to observe these spiders, which may be why I have been unable to identify them. Here are two photos. Can anyone make at least a genus identification?


Image:Treetip_communal_spider_10x.jpg Image:Treetip_communal_spider_60x.jpg
ventral view

They are tiny, the close-up was made at 60x and the full-body shot was made at 10x. The body of the spider is approximately 1 mm. long. P0M 04:28, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC) Image:Treetip_communal_spider_3-qtr1.jpg Finally succeeded in getting this one to hold still long enough to get a 60x photo of the upper surface of the abdomen. The eyes (photo not shown) appear like those of the Linyphiinae. P0M 00:05, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Social spiders?

A recent New Scientist article mentioned social spiders, that build collective hunting blinds. This would be an interesting tidbit to add to the article, if someone had more info on the subject.--Joel 00:07, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've been pestering people about the identity of these spiders. Some people who are much better educated in the subject than am I believe that they are actually spiderlings near the egg sac from which they were hatched and just waiting for the right breeze to spin their travelling kites and hit the road. I had a tentative identification, based on what I could see of one of them who wouldn't hold still, but finally I got a picture that showed the pattern of spots on the back and another photo that showed the eyes almost clearly enough (black on black) to be really helpful. I will go back to the atrium where I collected the first group and hope that there is another crowning twig with a group web within arm's reach of the railing.

When I went up to clean my chimney early last fall I discovered a couple of inquisitive little jumping spiders all the way up at the top. I wonder how many spider people visit the crowns of trees and the bottoms of old wells. P0M 01:49, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Spider species

Hello, I'd like to upload an image of a spider I made, but I do not know the species yet. I found this about 2 cm small animal in a forest in Germany. Any help would be greatly appreciated. -- Aka 10:47, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Aka, hi,

I don't know this one, although something about the way the spines are arranged along the legs is ringing a bell. Do you have any other photos? This photo is really quite nice. Other photos wouldn't have to be particularly attractive, but photos that show the spinnerettes and the pattern of the eyes can sometimes be helpful. Fortunately the spider you photographed has a very distinctive-looking back, and that might be enough to make a clear determination if you could find a few similar photographs by which you could check other features.

Was it originally on a web? If so, was it a spiral web, a "messy" web, a web that fits some other description? Was there any indication to you that it is probably some kind of spider that does not depend on a web to catch its prey? Was it hanging around a stream or pond? (Some spiders even make their hideouts under water.)

  • Hello, thanks for the comments. I made about 20 photos to sort out the best image and deleted the other ones already. But all of them basically showed the same spider from the same angel with the same size. This spider wasn't originally on a web, but near of a few remaining parts of a web, which looked somewhat destroyed. There was no pond and no stream. I can't answer the other questions, because basically I think spiders are quite disgusting but at the same time I'm somehow fascinated by these little animals ;) So, any help would still be greatly appreciated. -- Aka 09:17, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, you could go to http://www.xs4all.nl/%7eednieuw/Spiders/spidhome.htm and have a look around. The site concentrates on European spiders and it has some ways to help you find your spider. You may be able to find a book called Life of the Spiders by a British guy named John Crompton. I bought the book new for 35 cents in 1953 and became fascinated by these little animals that catch the flies that supposedly tranmit the polio virus and the mosquitos that bite. (Polio was a big cause of hatred of flies in the 40s and early 50s.) P0M 22:25, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Also try: http://www.museumkoenig.uni-bonn.de/for/lehre/dfor_lehre_huber_spiderkey/ARANEAE.html P0M 22:55, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Tarantula additions reverted

Will someone that knows what they're talking about please confirm or dismiss the recent additions by 82.170.178.184 and (if it's legit) place the information in a more appropriate location? ¦ Reisio 12:50, 2005 July 21 (UTC)

Hi, Reisio, Thanks for noticing the changes. I reverted to your earlier edit. The person who set up our taxonomy stuff is an expert in the field, and the English versions are either his or earlier ones by me that he didn't find it necessary to change. The problem with English names is that there is no standard for them. For some of the genera I made up names that would be at least minimally convey something about the type of spiders. If the expert knew of a more standard name he changed it to that name.

The name "Tarantula", properly speaking, belongs to a species of wolf spider. It was regarded as a horrible biter, falsely as it happens. When English-speaking people found the kinds of spiders we call tarantulas they gave them the same name. In other languages they are often called "bird-eating spiders." Anyway, there is nothing holy about these names, and calling all the spiders that belong to the Suborder Mygalomorphae some kind of tarantula would be preferable to names that suggest that they are unrelated. Right now there are several kinds of "tarantula" in that list and several kinds of "trapdoor spiders." It is not ideal, perhaps, but until we teach everyone Latin I think it will have to do. ;-) At least the names are better than "bananna spider" which turns out for some people to mean any spider they found on a clump of banannas and for other people the St. Andrews Cross orb web weavers -- because they are large and a little scary looking (I guess). P0M 20:54, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Interesting. :) ¦ Reisio 02:17, 2005 July 22 (UTC)
I move that we adopt the sensible course of calling theraphosids "bird-eating spiders" and nothing else. It was Linnaeus who coined the term avicularia, and we'd do well to follow his example. Or, even better, call them theraophosids! Calling all mygalomorphs 'tarantulas' is ridiculous in the extreme. 80.255 03:55, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

The policy on the English Wikipedia is to call things what they are called in English, and have the Latin names redirect to the English names. The policy on Wikipedia Commons is (quite reasonably) to have the Latin names take precedence. Giving English names for spiders that don't have an established English name is bound to be problematical. To me it would make sense to continue to use "Tarantula" for the Theraphosidae since there are pet stores and movies and all kinds of ways that popularize that name. But "Funnel-web tarantula" doesn't really make a lot of sense, IMHO, and "trapdoor tarantula" would go against the basic idea that we keep English names when they exist. "Trapdoor spider" is a common enough word. What is really a salient characteristic of this suborder that everybody can appreciate with a little observation with a magnifying glass (unless you're dealing with a nice big one) is that the chelicerae of all its members move almost perfectly parallel to each other. The other main suborder has chelicerae that come together diagonally like the way a person holds chopsticks. There are technical words for these two orientations, but nothing suggests itself to me as a simple and clear English equivalent. Ortho-gnashers vs. Clash-gnashers? I guess not. P0M 04:18, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Identify this Spider?

A friend of mine pointed me to a web page whereon he discovered a spider (or spider-like) creature, apparently in a tupperware container - complete with an MPEG movie of the little thing moving around. I have never seen anything like it, and was curious if anyone else had.

You can find it here - and I've tried Googling it, but get spotty (or false/no) results.

Can anybody tell me what they think this thing might be?

Thank you for your time and attention,
- The Lurking LongFist

It has a segmented abdomen, which must make it a member of the smallest of the 3 suborders of spiders, the Mesothelae. They are very rare I think. There is one called the "Kimura-gumo" and you can find that article by looking in Mesothelae or down near the bottom of Spider for a link. That species is native to Japan. I wonder where the one in the tupperware container comes from. If you want to Google some more try "Mesothelae", "Heptathela", or "spider" AND "segmented abdomen". I haven't seen many pictures. If you look for articles in Japanese and search for "kumo" and "Kimura" and look for images you may be able to find some pix there. I've done it, just can't remember how. They write "Kimura" in katakana (the squared-of, non-squiggly syllabary), but that's not how I found it.

Good luck. P0M 21:16, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

It would really be great if the owner of the pix would upload them all to Wikipedia Commons. They are rare examples of good pix of this kind of spider. I tried working back up the URL for a home page but couldn't find it. Do you know what the homepage is for those pix? P0M 21:28, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

They're good pics in that the quality is good, but pictures of creatures that aren't trapped in tupperware and pissed off would be much better. ¦ Reisio 02:05, 2005 July 22 (UTC)
I assume you've never tried to photograph a lithe and bristling solifugid! A few decent close-ups of the dead specimen would have been much more useful. Without close-ups, it's a case of 'seen one, seen 'em all' for numerous species. 80.255 03:46, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

It's a Windscorpion; maybe a Pale Windscorpion (Eremobates pallipes) [6]. Solifugae already has a little info and some pictures. ¦ Reisio 01:51, 2005 July 22 (UTC)


Yes its deffinetly a windscorpion and the facinating thing I read about them is there not venomous at all but do give a very painful bite if provoked

As photos go, they aren't very useful. It's certainly an eremobatid, and probably an eremobatinid, too, although that's difficult to determine from the photos, as a close up of the front tarsus would be required. Where was it captured? Eremobates is a large and widespread genus throughout the southern US, and contains most of the larger eremobatids, so it's quite likely to be a member of this. 80.255 03:40, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Recent unhelpful change

I am going to put this up for discussion rather than summarily reverting -- since the editor who put a link for both half (English and Latin) in all entries in the Taxonomy block also made some helpful edits. S/he has made every single entry in the taxonomy block, e.g., "Lycosidae Wolf Spiders" have its own link. That means when you click on one of them you'll get to a blank article instead of getting to something helpful. I wrote to him and he says that this result was intentional on his part. He hopes that in addition to having an article under the English name of a spider species or genera we will also have a separate article under the Latin name. If we did get such a result somebody would quite rightly suggest that we combine the two nearly identical articles and create a redirect. I don't believe that this convoluted procedure will be helpful. Does anybody else have an opinion? P0M 02:12, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

I never said that there should be two articles on the same subject! What I said was:
(a) these red links may tempt people to write the articles; (b) having links for both scientific and common names makes it easy to see when an article has been written at one name without a redirect at the other; (c) when someone does write an article on one of these families, they don't have to remember to edit spider to add a link.
This is quite reasonable, and how it works elsewhere in Wikipedia. See List of subgroups of the order Coleoptera, or List of birds for comparison.
For example, my making these links has revealed a small problem: the spider article implies that Cybaeidae is the family of water spiders. But water spider redirects to diving bell spider which is just one species in that family. Gdr 02:20:06, 2005-08-03 (UTC)

As I just said on your talk page, I wish you would have explained what you intended to do here first. When you make changes that vastly affect an article it can create turbulence when other people can't figure out what is going on. I suppose you intend to arrange for all of the redirects. They weren't there when I checked out a random pair of links. P0M 06:23, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

What did I miss? Gdr 19:41:18, 2005-08-03 (UTC)

Theridiosomatidae - missing from families list

I notice that Theridiosomatidae is missing from the list of families. Is there a reason for this other than it being an oversight? Or is my list out-of-date? Pcb21| Pete 13:27, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

When I started working on the spider article the taxonomic information was totally chaotic. I put some time in on it without knowing about recent changes. Not much later, fortunately, Dr. Richman put that part of the article into much better order. I don't think either of us had the goal of absolute inclusiveness. Personally, I wouldn't bother to add an entry for which I had no information to use as the basis of an article. (I got chewed out on "commons" for putting taxonomic headings in a list of images for which there were no pictures. I thought that the emotional tone behind those negative remarks was a bit over the top, perhaps because the person was not a native speaker of English, but I still see why he would object. It's like having a picture frame hanging on the wall with no picture in it.) On the other hand, having a blank entry in the correct place in charts will make it easier for the next person who wants to start an article. I guess the question is whether we want a list of entries that is meaningful in the sense that there is something more than the name of an otherwise unknown term. How many other families could we add to the list?

You mention the question of whether your list is out of date. You might check with Platnick's list, which is what Dr. Richman has taken as his standard. P0M 16:40, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Mystery spider

Does anybody recognize this beautiful 4mm. of spider? I thought she couldn't climb the glass of the large vase I put her in, but she managed to get out somehow, so I never got a very satisfactory picture of her eyes. Anyway, she is quite attractive. I haven't found a close match for her although I have my own guess as to genus. Image:Gold_green_red_spider.jpg Thanks. P0M 22:26, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

reminds me very much of a lovely little araneid I came across one spring some years back (in Maryland). Mine was a solid-colored abdomen, but otherwise much the same. I can't for the life of me remember the name, though, and my files and reference collection are pretty messed up after the last 2 moves. Very spiny legs, though.

The mystery spider was collected in central North Carolina, if that helps. (And please sign your postings.) P0M 17:11, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Barn Spider (Araneus cavaticus) behavior

I've always found these spiders interesting because they're nocturnal; when night comes and I walk by a spot one has chosen for its web, I check to see if it's come out yet, or if it's doing anything interesting.

Last night when I first checked, I saw only a web; this struck me as odd because the spider usually eats up her web every morning and leaves no great trace of it. I thought maybe some predator had gotten her, but she eventually showed. A little later as I was walking by I noticed another slightly smaller spider attached to her in a serious love embrace. :p

So, basically I'm thinking the female eats her web every morning until she's ready to mate, then she leaves it out as a sign to the male. The male finds it, waits for her to show, then gets down to business. In the case of last night it seemed like the male barely touched her web - I only saw him go, not come, but it seemed like he just dangled down from above right onto her. The female cantilevered out from the web holding on with only her front legs - the male's clasping combined with the strand he hung from apparently making the situation stable. When the deed was done the male let go suddenly and just hung rather still dangling in the air, looking rather exhausted. The female cleaned herself up and got back to sitting in the center of her web, and eventually the male went back up his line to get some rest.

Can anyone confirm any of this behavior as commonplace, or was it just coincidence that she left her web standing and that he seemed to stay off her web, etc.? ¦ Reisio 15:51, 2005 August 19 (UTC)

I don't know what is normal for that kind of spider. The accounts that I have seen for spiral web weavers is that the male approaches the edge of the web and then "drums" by plucking on a fiber of the web. This is apparently a species-specific recognition system of some kind. So it is clear that the web must be up in order for mating to occur. Maybe the male spider happened by, started drumming, and that interrupted the web take-down. Some spiders have differences between the chelicerae of the males and the females. The male chelicerae have notches or grooves that are specifically suited to grasping the chelicerae/fangs of the female. That is one way to keep her from biting him until he has finished mating. It seems that the dangle-down method is pretty good that way too. If she's holding onto the web with her frontmost legs then she can't very well grab him without letting go and falling away from him. Somebody should establish an archive for observations of this kind. My impression is that the tradition of the old naturalists like Fabre of learning about the behavior of spiders has largely been forgotten. One interesting question is just how a male spider ever finds a female spider. There might be a pheromone involved, or there might be a high-frequency or ultra-low-frequency sound involved. Maybe the web serves a wind-harp that vibrates at some frequency that humans can't pick up. I have a 3 acre pasture and one year there was one St. Andrew's Cross apider in a fence row. How would a male spider find the single female spider on 3 acres (or more, who knows where the next female made her web). P0M 19:08, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

As I recall, there is at least one report of male wandering spider of some sort (my files are all higgledy-piggledy right now) that orients itself to the female by following a special line she lays down as she travels when she's adult. I presume it's pheromone-based. It strikes me that a web would be a perfect disseminator for an air-borne pheromone. A bit trickier to test than Fabre's moths, though. I'd be more skeptical of the sound-frequency idea, though - it would have to be due to some identical structure in every web of that species, and given the variety of webs (size/shape/substrate) they spin around here (not to mention the affect of damage), I find that difficult to envision.

io link

Since the page is locked please add the interwiki link to the ido version (io:Araneo).

done P0M 02:57, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Desert wheel spider

Anyone know the name of the spider who live in desert and is capable to make wheel form for faster downhill moving? --Popski 09:20, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

At first I envisioned a spider doing a cartwheel, which would be cheating since they have 10 appendages and should find it easier to do than for the poor human who has only four appendages. But then I decided maybe this is a spider that draws its legs in so that it can take the approximate form of a ball. It would be easy for a spider to lose traction on a mound of sand and start to fall. Then it might "ball up" to protect itself, and it would roll until it came to the bottom of the hill. (There are no arctic wheel spiders because they would turn into snowballs. ;-) Actually, I think that this would only be an accident. There are two reasons: One is that spiders tend to move very slowly unless they are either escaping something they fear or are attacking something they desire to bite. Either way, rolling wherever gravity leads would not be beneficial to the spider. They would almost never roll right onto their prey at just the moment gravity brought them to a stop, and if they were trying to escape from a bird or something, the predator would just keep up with them until they rolled to a dizzy stop and grab them before they had gotten their wits back.
There are also stories about snakes that grab their tails in their mouths and roll downhill like abandoned hula hoops, but no scientist seems ever to have collected one. That's too bad. Imagine what a great attraction they could be in a zoo. And zoos could go into paramutual betting, which would be good for their bottom line. ;-) P0M 15:41, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

After short web search I found the name of this spider: Wheel Spider, (Carparachne aureoflava), thank you anyway. --Popski 15:44, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

abdomen

This page, like many bug-related pages, links to abdomen, which is an article about the human abdomen. We desperately need, and don't seem to have, an article about arthropod abdomens. I thought perhaps one of the people who watches this site would be willing to write at least a stub. Thanks. Chick Bowen 03:18, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Blue blooded =

I've heard spiders are blue-blooded; this article denies it's actually blood, but I wonder, does the color & what produces it (haemocyanin, I think), merit mention? Trekphiler 23:32, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Not arachnids?

My friend said to me that he heard spiders aren't actually arachnids. Laughable, I know, but has anyone else heard this, and could they tell me where from?

Maybe he was thinking of sea spiders? Gdr 00:28, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

It's like "White horses are not horses." Not all arachnids are spiders, but all spiders are arachnids. There are other arachnids that share that tent with the spiders, just as monkeys and apes share the primate tent with humans. P0M 05:34, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Apparently it was some sort of tarantula. Any help to anyone?


?heck the spider article. There are three main subdivisions of the animals we call spiders. Tarantulas and a few other spiders fit in one group, orb weavers and most common U.S. spiders fit in a second group, and the third group of spiders is really rare. All spiders are arachnids. P0M 22:26, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

  • I would guess he's talking about the ever popular Camel spider. It's an arachnid, but not a spider. Wikibofh(talk) 22:47, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
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