Dolomedes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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 D. fimbriatus female
with juvenile spiders |
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| c. 100 species | ||||||||||||
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D. albineus |
Dolomedes is a genus of spiders of the family Pisauridae. They are also known as fishing spiders or dock spiders. Almost all Dolomedes species are semi-aquatic, with the exception of the tree-dwelling D. albineus in the southwestern United States and the grassland spider D. minor in New Zealand.
They use their toes for capturing prey. Like all pisaurids, female Dolomedes carry their egg sacs in their chelicerae, and use silk to build a nursery web. These nursery webs are built shortly before the spiderlings emerge from the eggsac. The female places the egg sac in the nursery web, and the spiderlings emerge within twenty-four hours. The spiderlings of most North American Dolomedes species remain in the web for one week, and then disperse en masse.
D. triton, the six-spotted fishing spider, lives primarily in small lakes and ponds. This spider consumes mostly water striders, but like all Dolomedes, is an opportunistic ambush hunter that will eat anything that it can capture.
Other Dolomedes species are D. scriptus, the dark fishing spider (D. tenebrosus), the raft spider (D. fimbriatus) and D. plantarius.
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[edit] Dolomedes in North America
Nine species of Dolomedes exist in North America. These include the pond-dwelling species D. triton, the bog-dwelling species D. striatus and the stream-dwelling species D. scriptus, D. vittatus, D. gertschi and D. holti. Two North American species, D. tenebrosus and D. okefinokensis, exhibit female giganticism and/or male dwarvism. The males of both species are less than half the size of the female. The ninth species is the arborial D. albineus.
[edit] Dolomedes in Europe
D. plantarius and D. fimbriatus are the only two European Dolomedes species. D. plantarius is currently listed as endangered in Great Britain and globally vulnerable.
[edit] Gallery
 Male Fishing spider with enlarged pedipalps |
 Dolomedes triton |
 Dolomedes sulfureus |
 Dolomedes triton juveniles in nursery web |
 Fishing spider with two limbs missing |
 Dolomedes tenebrosus |
[edit] References
[edit] Further reading
- Carico, James Edwin (1973): The Nearctic spiders of the genus Dolomedes (Araneae: Pisauridae). Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology (Harvard) 144(7): 435-488.
[edit] External links
- Fishing spider Dolomedes tenebrosus
- Pictures of Dolomedes triton (free for noncommercial use)
- Jeffrey K. Barnes, Dark fishing spider, Arthropod Museum Notes, University of Arkansas.
- Richard Ford, The raft spider (Dolomedes fimbriatus), Digitalwildlife.co.uk. image and short description
