The Blacktailed Red Sheetweaver

The Blacktailed Red Sheetweaver is a very small (~3mm), strange looking spider and their long name reflects this. They have a black tubercle (bump) at the end of their abdomens and their red jammies are quite striking. The crimson may look good on me (despite my wife's insistence that I should dress for my winter-spring skin palette), but it doesn't make for good camouflage in grasses and shrubbery (click the link!). Maybe their small size and the fact that they're passive hunters eliminates the need for much camouflage. The fact-checkers are telling me that this is the first spider I've written about who is a passive hunter, so let me explain this. A passive hunter is one that lies in wait for its prey, rather than going out and chasing it down. Blacktailed Red Sheetweavers have an interesting web design - no flying toasters or flashing text (When was the last time you read a book on web design, Brian? 1998!?).  Their webs are made up of randomly-strung stopping-strands above a loosely woven sheet. The stopping strands knock little bugs out of the air and onto the top of the sheet, through which, they are bitten by the upside-down hanging spider (this is OK though, as nothing done through a hole in this sheet actually counts). The Blacktailed Red Sheetweaver actually spends most of its life upside down - you'll notice this in this post's pictures, as well as the pictures in their Flickr photo-set (I didn't just rotate them weird).


For a single girl, Florinda thought she had it all: a web all her own in a trendy
part of the lawn, all the gnats and little flies that she could eat (pictured!), and
her dream job writing for a women's-interest magazine. But she was about to
find out how much more there is to life! Because a chance meeting with Mr. Right
is about to turn her whole world upside down. When an impulse wedding leads
to a high-profile photo shoot and instant internet stardom, they just might find
that their spacious web in a high rise pepper plant gets a little too small for their
egos!...Starring: Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones!


The Blacktailed Red Sheetweaver, or Florinda coccinea, is not considered to be a common spider species. Before last summer, I had never seen them in my yard or garden (yarden?). So I believe that the female I saw in my lawn in July is the same female that had shacked up in my Jamaican Hot Scotchbonnet pepper plant in August.

As spider species go, males are either about the same size as females, or the males are much smaller (those guys prefer a woman with some meat). For a female spider, it's common for a similarly sized male to make its own web adjacent to her's, or for a tiny male to live in the female's web - mostly on the periphery. But it's not common for a male and a female of similar size to share a web and truly cohabitate. By cohabitating, I mean that the male shares the web for a longer term than courting and mating requires, and it's not just her web that he's crashing in - he actually takes some responsibility for constructing, cleaning and maintaining the web (uncommon, am I right ladies!?). But this is the case for the Blacktailed Red Sheetweaver.

As I observed this pair last August, it occurred to me that, although they were living together, the female wasn't wearing a ring. This concerned me greatly because, not only were they living in sin, but they were also overpaying in income tax by not being able to take advantage of the joint-filer deduction! So, having become an ordained minister in the online Universal Life Church some years ago, I performed their marital rites (I'm pretty sure I had their permission) with the family of (already married) Mourning Doves (probably mourning their loss of independence, am I right guys!?) that live under my porch as witnesses. With that out of the way, I put them into a container so that I could observe them more and get some good pics of them (honeymoon pics?).



The female Blacktailed Red Sheetweaver pictured above wants to try out some
new coloration this season. She looks in her closet every morning and sighs over
her form-flattering, but monochromatic, wardrobe. Plus, that B* (or is she a bee?)
that she's always in competition with at the magazine she writes for just wrote an
article saying that black spots were 2000-and-late!



I've found that many web building spiders have a hard time walking on flat surfaces. But usually when I see this, it's a large female spider with a huge abdomen that she can't lift (the phrase of the week is: Yo mamma's butt is sooooo big, that when she sits down...she gets taller! I hope you liked that one because you'll probably hear this phrase again in a future post). I don't believe that this was the case for these two, but they had a hard time getting their footing. I ended up adding some natural material to their photo-booth container and giving them some time to web-up their new scaffolding. When I returned, I found them settled in and upside down in their newly-webbed  container (because they were just married...you might need to say that out loud to get it).

But I believe that these two spiders were in the middle of a little spat. Now as anyone who's lived with a significant other knows, it's not always as pleasant and agreeable as what was depicted in The Honeymooners - with their frequent, romantically-charged discussions about space travel and lunar exploration (perhaps this is not the timeliest reference...you might have to ask your parents about this joke. Better yet, ask your grandparents. If Mee-maw & Pappy aren't still with us or aren't from here, your best bet will be any white person in a retirement home - they'll know what's up). So I was doing that awkward thing where you're obviously standing right there but you're pretending not to hear the fight that's going on next to you, hoping that the bickering couple will realize how rude they're being...Anyway, the gist was that she was upset about having to move to a new place without a lot of notice and, of course, she wanted (him) to repaint it. But neither of them really knew how long they would be there for - blah, blah, blah. Eventually I just tried to tune it out. But I could tell that the Mourning Doves felt super awkward.



The male Blacktailed Red Sheetweaver pictuerd above doesn't understand why
the female wants to go and spend a bunch of money on a whole new wardrobe.
He thinks she looks great in what she has! And besides, crimson with a black
dot is the look that defines the spider he fell in love with...But when was the last
time he told her so?



Then, at some point, I accidentally jostled their circular container and one of them started running along the web spun around the edge. He ran around the circle until he got close to his wife, where he stopped. But then she started running the same circuit. They did this about 10 times - each one successively running around the same track while the other waited in place. They looked like a Newton's Cradle pendulum or like they were practicing for a relay race (but there was no batton - far out!). They may have just been disagreeing on who had to sleep on the couch, but continually running away and avoiding each other is a tiresome way to not resolve a fight.

All that running was really making it hard for me to take good pictures. So I eventually butted in and told them their business.

Enter: Brian, Bug Therapist

So we all sat down and I played marriage counselor. At first, they both said the standard stuff: she thought marriage would be different and he thinks she's changed, he thinks she spends too much money but she feels like he doesn't treat her like a partner financially, you know. So we ended up having one of those long Venus & Mars, Love & Respect, 5 Love Languages discussions. By the time I let them go, I think they were finally ready to stop holding each other accountable for their own baggage, they were able to articulate their expectations to one another (guys - nothing helps a woman understand what's important to you like saying nothing; ladies - nothing helps a man appreciate your expectations like griping to your girlfriends), and rather than treating each other how they would want to be treated, they finally started treating each other how the other wanted to be treated (I am so Steve Carell!...Why isn't anyone laughing? Oh, I guess no one saw Hope Springs. I mean, I didn't. But I heard that Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones were adorable together).

All I want for my birthday is a big-booty ho
 - Tauheed Epps (AKA: 2 Chainz, formerly Tity Boy)

Yellow Sac Spider

So I said at the end of my last post that I would be updating more frequently, and look at me - doing what I said I would. Nice!

If you're one of my very most extra loyal readers who eagerly awaited my bug updates even before I launched the global phenom that is BugsIRL, you may recognize this post. But keep reading - there's new content and, as always, plenty of new action/excitement!


Look at that abdomen on her! She only wears a size -50
Applebottom Jeans, but she wears them well!

Way back in early July, my wife and I were doing some Spring cleaning (in our house, "Spring" cleaning is more of a year-round activity and often involves spreadsheets). While cleaning, we had the back door open for much of the day. At one point, my wife saw a spider waltz (it was more like a tarentella, for all you many, many fans of Rennaissance Itallian folk dance) into the house like it owned the place - as if there's a sign on our house that says: Please come in and tell us about the Good News (do I intend to suggest that this spider is a Jehovah's Witness?). Anyway, my wife immediately asked me to "take care of" this spider. Being the hospitable type, I obliged and offered her a cookie and inquired as to whether she would be joining us for dinner (the spider, not my wife). Typical of the rudeness I've come to expect from Yellow Sac Spiders, her response was noncommittal.

As Yellow Sac Spiders in the US go, we have two species: Cheiracanthium mildei & Cheiracanthium inclusum - both of which are European imports (spiders are excellent hitchhikers).

While I didn't keep her around for prolonged study, the pictures I took, and her behavior, lead me to believe that this is more likely to be C. mildei, which is well known to enter homes. Whereas C. inclusum tends to stay in fields and gardens. Also, C. mildei is typically more ashen colored and often has a dark face, contrasted with C. inclusum, which is typically a lighter yellow and is less likely to have a dark face.

It's not unusual to find traces of these guys in high corners of houses. They'll do this anytime, but especially at the end of an instar (growth phase), they'll find a quiet, out of the way place, make a silky silky sac, and molt in there. When they're done, they leave their webby hammock with all their old exoskeleton in the hard-to-reach spot they chose like a bunch of freeloading jerks (Oh yeah, I'm done in there. Just clean it up whenever you get around to it. Bye-bye!).

Another awesome about Cheiracanthium Yellow Sac Spiders: their bites may have some medical significance...or not. Reports on this vary pretty widely. I've read everything from an itchy red spot to a few days of aches and nausea. Further, I came across one source that claims this to be the world's 10th most venomous spider. However, the most common report seems to be a painful but small swelling at the bite site that takes a while to go away. My personal read of the more severe reports is that a few (most likely) dry bites resulted in some mild infection, which elevated things from yucky to rather unpleasant. In addition, the one singular only report of tissue necrosis struck me as ready for debunking, aside from the reported bite having probably not come from a Yellow Sac Spider in the first place. As if the literature on Cheiracanthium toxicity wasn't all over the map enough, there's also debate about their bites, themselves. While some authors claim that Yellow Sac Spiders won't bite humans at all, even when provoked, others claim that they do bite without provocation and attribute slumber-bites to them.

Spiders have been causing people to freak out and overreact for a long time (see: tarantism & the tarantella). But Yellow Sac Spiders are also somewhat notorious for reasons other than potential (but unlikely) toxicity and have even made the news a few times. In 2011, another closely related species (C. inclusum) was in the news for making its home in 2009 & 2010 Mazda 6 fuel lines, causing loss of fuel pressure. After a few dozen complaints, Mazda recalled these two model years of the 6 to correct the issue. One source I read said that it was eventually discovered that they were entering through an opening near the gas cap and another said that they were entering through the exhaust, but I don't believe it was ever discovered conclusively why this particular species was so attracted to the fuel lines of this particular car, from these particular model years (in particular). Wikipedia simply says that they like the smell of volatiles in gasoline. I was skeptical, so I read the article that the claim cites. The citation is a Reuters article and the particular claim is a quote from someone described as an automotive journalist...That doesn't make the claim incorrect, but I don't think I need to explain the pause before this sentence. If any reader knows of a reliable source that this journalist may have been referencing, please post it in the comments.

Here's another interesting: the family (Miturgidae (older sources have them grouped in Clubionidae)) that these little darlings belong to is sometimes called the Prowling Spiders. That sounds slightly bad ass...or at least bad butt. They are so bad butt that they don't even use webs to catch their food (total Chuck Norris move) - they prowl it out! Now I skipped my hip-hop aerobics class last week to take my lady tot he new DQ Grill & Chill across the street for some soft serve, but I'm pretty sure that the "prowl it out" is a procedure associated with the pop-and-lock methods of whittling my midsection and toning my core.

Kind of like Tickle-Me Elmo...except with
fangs and gonopores (...Look it up! - Ha! Nice
Zoidberg reference.).

My conclusion on the bite stuff is that I wouldn't be too worried about it - although I probably won't be uncurling every webby leaf in my garden. Since I don't want to be liable for anyone getting pinched, I'd advise that if you're going to pick up a Yellow Sac Spider for tummy rubs, like I did in this picture, you should use the last paper towel to do it. Also, your wife should have just replaced the paper towels for you without making such a fuss.

So after some awkward small talk with the uninvited Yellow Sac Spider pictured, I politely asked her to hit that old dusty trail (notice my delicate use of the appropriate requesting-towel... light quilting maximizes request acquiescence).

I mentioned earlier that I didn't keep her around for any prolonged observation. But, in preparation for this post, I did manage to trap what I thought to be a male of this species, out in my garden. But after taking a closer look at the pictures I took of this other spider, I now believe it to be an immature female Cheiracanthium inclusum (the other Yellow Sac Spider species mentioned). So those pictures won't be a part of this post. I'm not sure yet if I'll do a post on that spider some time this winter, or if I'll just put them in an online photo library (once I finally get around to doing that). But I will be sharing them with the world, soon enough.

Everyone would start jockin', tha news would take my picta' - damn, I wish I could be a ninja!
 - The Insane Clown Posse

Woodlouse Hunter

Good news everyone! My blog has gone global! It's recently been viewed from the UK (home of the 2012 Summer Olympics), Germany (home of Olympic Games, past), and Russia (home of a future Winter Olympics...also, I hate the Winter Olympics). Given this deluge of world-wide media attention, I feel that I have no choice but to give the foreign web-indexer robots what they want: more cat-themed posts!

This post is about a spider (be forewarned). But it also gives an interesting look at sibling dynamics. Also: yes, we do refer to our three cats as sisters. Although they are all different breeds (none of them are pure-bred, so "breed" seems a little strong, but "cat-type" doesn't really have the same oomph), they don't seem to resent this too much.

The last post involved our cat who we'll continue to refer to as P - she refused to sign the release and insists that she wants nothing to do with all this inter-what's-it ballyhoo. Out of respect to her, I'll continue to preserve her anonymity. But she's not really involved in this post. This story is about Coco and Molly.

Coco signed the release form without even reading it (disconcerting). But she'll basically sign anything I put in front of her (she didn't understand why the Human Cent-iPad episode of South Park was funny).

Molly was a tougher nut to crack, but we struck a bargain - she got to watch me play with a ping-pong ball. Now she'll play with ping-pong balls if she's by herself - but if I come to watch her, she insists on watching me. I used to think that maybe she just wanted me to have a turn, but I now believe that she's just interested in all my fancy ping-pong ball rolling tricks. Namely, I put English on it so that it rolls back to me, curves around, or makes sharp turns when it bumps something.

As a side note, I bought Molly's current pack of ping-pong balls at the Sheetz station on Rte. 29 in Ruckersville, VA. I had recently stepped on her old ping-pong ball by accident, so when I stopped for gas on the way back from a visit to Charlottesville in the spring and spotted these by the cash register, I thought of her. But the point of this side note is that I was carded for the ping-pong balls! When the cashier asked for my ID, she said it was because I was "getting that game." I thought about returning the compliment and telling her that I thought she had game, as well...But I knew what she meant. Random thought: could I have made grain alcohol from the white-cheese popcorn I was also getting?

Anyway, to the spiders! So the other weekend, I heard Molly crying (meowl-ing) from the basement. Sometimes this means she wants me to come clean her litter box, other times this means that I'm not paying enough attention to her and we're in different parts of the house. When I went downstairs (like a chump), Molly was waiting for me at the bottom of the steps and Coco was near the opposite corner trying to look casual. Molly led me over to Coco and, while I was distributing pettings, Coco tried to play it up as though she had just then noticed the mature, male Woodlouse Hunter right in front of her. 

Let me break this down for you. What happened here is that Coco was just handling her business - doing cat stuff, being too curious (consider reviewing some advice on curiosity in the previous post, BugsIRL: Classic - Cicada Killer), and maybe getting into just enough trouble to keep her day interesting. Molly, either because of feeling left out of the game, or because of general younger-sibling anxiety, decided to blow up Coco's spot and come tattle on her. Meowl! Meowl! Dad! Meowl! Dad! Dad!!! So, Dad came to see what all the fuss was (and probably tell someone to stop slamming the screen door) and ended up ruining all the good-natured fun. Can anyone detect a bias in this retelling that might hint at my birth-order?

Normally, I'd try to safely put him outside. But with Coco already making her plans for him, I moved to get the closest thing to kill him with. As I moved back towards him, I watched Coco playfully bat at him. Thankfully, his response was to curl up. However, if he had reared back and shown his fangs, I'm sure I would have been able to see them clearly from where I was standing.

So I did, unfortunately, kill that spider. But, in the interest of blogging, I've since gone out and captured a male and a female. Now, all you lucky bastiges (Johnny Dangerously! Anyone? Anyone? Nope? OK.) get to enjoy some up-close views without the horror of handling these monsters!

People tell me that I wear my heart on my sleeve, but
they're mistaken. As you can clearly see, it's close to the
surface along the middle of my abdomen. With some of the
major blood vessels also visible, it kind of makes a lightning
bolt pattern. Also, don't mind that splotch on my right
side...I ran into a slug while evading capture.

If you're like me, you'll find it hard to look away from this picture. If you're like my wife, you may have to tape a piece of paper over part of your screen to continue reading this page. Either way, you're probably hungry for more info on this spider!

The Woodlouse Hunter is so named because of its primary prey: woodlice. This is the grown-up name for roly-polys. They can spin silk, but they don't use it to catch prey. They creep around, under stuff and through mulch or leaf litter, actively hunting for potato bugs, pill bugs, sow bugs, as well as other, more obscure names for roly-polys. They are also said to occasionally prey on some beetles. But as the main beetles they're likely to share their environment with (at least in the mid-Atlantic) are stag beetles, which could easily out run them, I'd imagine that this isn't the norm.

Separate beds - just like Lucy &
Ricky! "You know, all the really
smart people are sleeping in separate
beds" - the slutty one from
Downton Abbey.

Although they don't use silk for hunting, they do spin themselves lovely bed chambers under stuff. In the picture at right, you can see two compact sleeping units that were nestled cozily under my favorite piece of lawn cardboard. Woodlouse Hunters are mostly nocturnal, so they were of course thrilled when I lifted up their roof in the middle of the afternoon. The two that made these elliptical, silken retreats scurried off quickly, so I don't know what their situation was. But I imagine they had an Ernie & Bert style will-they/won't-they thing going on.

Aside from their unique coloration and only having six eyes (most spiders have eight), the Woodlouse Hunter's most distinguishing feature is its enormous fangs. These are needed to pierce the thick, hard shell of balled-up, terrestrial isopods (there will be a quiz at the end). Since the two spiders that I caught were either constantly moving or constantly hiding (constantly), I wasn't able to get many pics of their fangs. If these pics I took (below) inspire you though, I'd encourage you to do some Googlin' - some of the pics out there can look pretty threatening (more on this, below).

More of a trophy than a meal.

THREAT DISPLAY!

I need some me-time.

 


As dangerous as their fangs make them look, I did not find this spider to be quick to use them (neither did Coco, praise Neptune). My theory on why this would be is basically that their size adds significant liability to their use. Consider the following. Imagine that you're a little boy (I know this just got creepy, but stay with me here). Little boys are always making swords or other weapons out of random things they find. In my case, I usually had a huge armory well stocked with sticks. I would swing these sticks around, hit stuff with them, and hopefully only break my sabers, katanas, and machetes. But I could afford to break these swords, which often started out so long that they were unwieldy, because there were always more sticks. This is not the case for the Woodlouse Hunter. A spider's fangs do not grow back, if broken. Further, I'm lucky in this analogy in that I could have chosen plenty of other implements to swing at all the ninjas, goblins, koopas, and trees that had looked at me the wrong way that I was constantly battling with (constantly) - I never had to rely on a particular stick as the only means that I would ever have of subduing and digesting food. So, while it did take some prodding to get the female in the pic above to make the threat display shown, I never got the impression that she intended to follow through. After looking online for other peoples' experiences, it seems like my observation is the typical one. I did find a paper with the results of eight confirmed bites (on eight different people). The theme was swelling, itching, and slight pain that went away after an hour. There were also some non-confirmed bites that raised some concern over the toxicity of this spider's venom.

I'd also like to relay an interesting anecdote about the female pictured above with the moth. I was going to have to keep her for a few days, so I put that moth in her container as a feeder bug. After it flapped around a bunch, she killed it. I don't think she injected any venom, because she never tried to eat it. I think that the moth was just annoying her! The next day, as I was taking pictures, she would occasionally give it a quick, dry bite. Then she would typically pick it up and try to hide under it.

So in terms of identification, these spiders are pretty easy. Dysdera crocata is the only species in this family believed to live in the Eastern US. I've read that there's another, nearly indistinguishable species that's been found far from human habitations in other parts of North America. But I think I can be reasonably confident that these are D. crocata. The thing about spiders though, is that they're excellent hitch-hikers. In fact, this spider, which is common throughout much of the world, is originally native to Europe. Related thought: so my wife and I went with my brother in law to the National Museum of the American Indian, last weekend - none of the exhibits specifically addressed whether they're ever surprised to lift up junk in their back yards and find people of European descent living beneath. That was an insensitive joke, Brian...Also a little bit meandering.

Well, here we are...I would love to write more and put up more of my pictures, but this entry has gotten pretty long and the pics I've already put up are probably weighing down the page. I have about 60 other pics of these two spiders. Way too many to put here. So I'm considering starting starting a flickr or Picasa account to link from here. I could post my pictures, add some bitty captions, and my many fans would be able to peruse them at their leisure, again and again. Yeah. Maybe I'll do that.

Wrapping up old business, the emoticon I posted last week: ))<>((
is from the 2005 movie You And Me And Everyone We Know. It denotes the totally possible act of "pooping back and forth." As the keyboardsman explains, this is where one party poops into the butt of another party. Then, the second party poops it back into the butt of the first party. He goes on to explain that this could continue indefinitely - specifically, forever. Despite this hopeless romantic's lack of regard for the long-term integrity of a typical fecal mass, his description leads an otherwise minor female character to make some pretty questionable choices. Overall, I give the film a solid C. This one memorable and amusing gem can be viewed on YouTube (if you don't feel like you just saw the whole scene). I'm not sure if any of the available clips include the twist near the end of the movie, though.

Thank you all for reading. Please post comments or send questions to whodatbug@gmail.com. Until next time, I leave you with this parting thought.

I'm pimping where I'm winning - that's just how I'm chilling. I'm smoking grits & selling chickens; corvette painted lemons.
 - Radric Davis (AKA, Gucci Mane), 2009