crab spider ~ 07/02/14 ~ Donner Pass

crab spider captured Montana crescent on common yarrow

Thomisidae captured Phyciodes pulchella montana on Achillea millefolium

posted 09/28/14 - If I were to hazard a guess as to the type of crab spider, I'd say it's a flower crab spider (Misumena), more specifically the goldenrod crab spider (Misumena vatia).  Another possibility could be the whitebanded crab spider (Misumenoides formosipes).  However, I'm guessing it's near impossible to tell from my photo, even if I knew what diagnostics to look for.  Eh, I'm not too fussed about the spider ID.  I'm guessing there are more spiders on flowers than I ever notice, because good nectar sources are essentially ready-made butterfly buffets, bee buffets, you name it, for hungry spiders.  Seriously, crab spiders are extraordinarily good at camouflage.  Art thought the Montana here is most likely a female.  Ya.  Hey, I'll take whatever photos I can get.  This is one of my better ones.

ps  - I found Ed Nieuwenhuys' Australian crab spider page to be fantastic.

cobweb spider ~ 03/20/14 ~ at home

cobweb spider

Theridiidae

A couple years ago in October, a friend expressed disgust at the amount of cobwebs around our front door.  He even offered to clean the stairwell for me.  I told him to leave it alone, because I was letting nature do my decorating for Halloween.  Ha!  Truth be told, I'm a lazy housekeeper. Then, last spring when dead crane flies and moths* were accumulating at an excessive rate, I finally did the deed and attacked everything with a broom, vacuum, and a rag.  Quick and dirty. I discovered that a big broom is ineffective against the nickel-sized tan egg sacs that are almost always laid against a corner or crevice.  Bugger.  The spiders dropped and fled for their lives. 

So, I've been watching her up by the porch light the past few months.  I started worrying that she might drop on my head.  Not likely, but still.  This year I decided it was time for Katie's Spider Relocation Program (KSRP) to kick into gear.  I armed myself with an old sock, an old toothbrush, a wide-mouth jar, and a magazine paper advert.  Because of her sticky cobweb, it was really hard to catch her.  I may have accidentally dented her abdomen.  Phooey. Hand-in-sock and the toothbrush worked wonders with removing webbing and those stubborn egg sacs.  She, her eggs, and a smaller male companion are now spending the rest of their days in the neighboring park.

For blogging purposes, I had hoped this was the false black widow (Steatoda grossa).  I can't be sure.  None of my pictures clearly show the markings on the front part of her abdomen.  It looks like there might be a lighter colored stripe that curves around, but it's hard to tell.  I'm satisfied only going to family for ID.  Sonja had me use the a Golden Guide Spiders and Their Kin when I fielded spider ID calls at the museum.  I have the older green cover 1990 edition, and it's still pretty handy if you're not fussed about getting exact species. 

* Moths found in the stairwell:  plume and nola, Gabriola, geometrids and pug, Edwards' glassy-wing, and painted tiger.

CA turret spider ~ 02/10/14 ~ Stevens Creek

California turret spider

Antrodiaetus riversi (formerly Atypoides riversi)

posted 03/15/14 - It seems to me a great many locals to the Santa Cruz Mountains know about these turret spiders and in great detail as this BayNature article by David Lukas explains.  The part I found most interesting is this quote, "Analysis of hundreds of genetic samples reveals that instead of a single species, there are at least eight species of California turret spiders, and even these eight species can be further divided into distinct subpopulations separated by obstacles in their environment."  They apparently don't move around much.  I was unfamiliar until Ken pointed out this little structure to Randy and me.  Note the cool use of douglas-fir needles?  I'm always amazed at the "houses" animals will build for themselves.  Now I have The Three Little Pigs on the brain.  Stickless stone woodrat midden, anyone?

colonial orb weaver ~ 10/21/12 ~ Elkhorn Slough

colonial orb weaver

Metepeira spinipes

Whenever I consider shutting down Nature ID due to the tremendous time commitment it requires, I'm reminded of the value of the personal narrative that's recorded as I learn about my local natural world.  Last summer while driving home from the grocery store I happened to meet a fellow who is the country's lead researcher on these unusual social spiders, which also happened to answer a question I had from the year before.  To read that post, click here.

Now, this past winter was definitely not an El Niño year, so it was interesting to find hundreds of these colonial orb weavers on Hummingbird Island and nowhere else we visited at Elkhorn Slough, exactly where the CA oak moths were most abundant - a great example of prey availability. Apparently, Metepeira spinipes are not always colonial.

In the first picture, above the spider are her egg sacs.  In the second picture, there are at least 3 different females, one in the center and the other 2 towards the top at 12:01 and 12:05 positions.  The plant they've spun their chaotic orb webs on is CA sagebrush (Artemisia californica).  And, here's a repeat link, because I like it so much in how these colonial orb weavers remind me of "Spiders on Drugs".

shamrock orb weaver ~ 09/29/12 ~ Rocky Creek

shamrock orb weaver

Araneus trifolium

Spiders and snakes, oh my!  It's that time of year - the month of Halloween.  Spiders have been around all summer (and in most cases, all year round), but it seems the orb weavers are often noticed in the autumn when the females are huge and about ready to lay eggs.  Close to this one, we also found a very large dark grey orb weaver that I think might have been Araneus andrewsi, but I didn't get a clear picture of it.

It's unfortunate that spiders are so misunderstood and misidentified.  To accurately identify most spiders, one would need to microscopically look at the genitalia. Depending on the age, the sex, and possible other factors, different individuals of a single spider sp. can look vastly different from each other.  A look-alike spider to the one I have above is the cross orb weaver (Araneus diadematus). The difference to me is the shamrock has a more spotty look, whereas the cross orb weaver has a definite elongated flower-petal cross on the abdomen, with a prominent "petal" closest to the cephalothorax. Clare at Curbstone Valley Farm has a great new post on cross orb weavers, which are quite common garden spiders.

I'm still looking for a decent spider ID site.  Steve Lew, associated with U.C. Berkeley, had a fabulous spider site, but his research page has been abandoned.  Maybe he finished his PhD and moved on?  Speaking of U.C. Berkeley, they do have two quick reference guides for common CA big spiders and small spiders.  BugGuide (linked in the scientific names above) is okay, but you have to already have a good idea of what you have or wade through thousands of pictures to find a match.  I still use my old handy-dandy A Golden Guide Spiders and Their Kin, originally published by Western Publishing Company, Inc., to get in the ballpark of which spider I have.  I guess St. Martin's Press is now printing the books, but I haven't checked out the new books, yet.  I'm keeping my eye on Spiders.us as a developing and potentially great spider site. I just hope they don't go the way of InsectIdentification.org and place adverts in prime content areas.  U.C. Irvine has a nice page of arachnids of Orange County, but they don't include any of the spiders I've mentioned here.  Perhaps, they're too far south?  I'm going to continue looking for additional spider links, but the first couple dozen sites I found had so many errors that I didn't want to include them.

green lynx spider ~ 12/10/11 ~ Los Padres Dam

western variation female green lynx spider on cudweed
Peucetia viridans on Pseudognaphalium sp.
Asteraceae

That's quite a large egg sac she's protecting! She's about 1" or more in size but not very green, eh? While searching for an ID, I looked at other Oxyopidae, and none seemed to match as well as P. viridans. It helped to read that this spider can change color depending on the season or surroundings. As I was getting in close to take pictures, I got a whiff of the lovely scent from the cudweed. Green lynx spiders are not the only things that utilize cudweed blooms; Cindy at Dipper Ranch found American lady caterpillars tucked into her cudweed.

spider egg sac ~ 06/30/11 ~ at home

spider egg sac

Ever since I found several pupa and a poop-shooting, geranium-eating caterpillar, I've placed various wandering spiders on my geranium plant. I am hoping these are spider eggs, but I don't really know. Each egg rolled around inside the silk sac like miniature gumballs. To find out what they are, I placed this broken stem in some water and the whole thing in a container. My handy-dandy containers with nylon stocking tops are getting a workout this year.

ps 07/14/11 - I originally posted this as an unidentified egg sac. Yep, these are spiders. They hatched 2 days ago and were clustered around the silk casing. I took them out this morning to take a closer look and hopefully get some pictures, but with the slight movement they all started dropping on tiny lines of silk. I was barely able to float them over to a couple plants where they hung in the breeze off the leaves. I hope they stick around.

crab spider ~ 03/31/11 ~ Carmel Highlands

best guess female goldenrod crab spider on greater periwinkle
best guess Misumena vatia on Vinca major
Apocynaceae

Let me be clear, this spider ID is my best guess. I wish my early morning photos showed the eyes and carapace better. The more I looked into Thomisidae (aka crab spiders), the more I got confused with the genera of interest - Mecaphesa (too hairy), Misumena (only vatia is well-pictured online), Misumenoides (eh?), Misumenops (most nearctic spp. now placed in Mecaphesa). I felt like Bill the Cat Ack!

Despite being considerably south from where I live, I have really liked UC Irvine's Natural History of Orange County for their pictorial representations, but I have some doubts their spider IDs are entirely correct. I've linked to BugGuide twice in the common name and the scientific name above, and even they're not all that accurate. I'm not criticizing them, it's just the nature of the beast, so to speak. There are so many insects and spiders out there, it's a challenge for everyone. I suspect the people who really know, don't spend their time posting pictures online. I found this list of Spiders of California helpful to check what actually occurs around here.

A fellow nature blogger and I were e-mailing about how we don't want to add to the prolific online misinformation. Yet, I want to learn more. For people who find my blog through searches (apparently, google and bing are now my best "customers"), they may not be aware that this blog is my learning tool and I'm totally okay making mistakes. I've said it once and I'll say it again, I am NOT an expert. All I can guarantee are that my pictures are taken on the date of the blog post and at the location indicated in the labels.

At the end of the day, my final thought on the above pictures is, "Oooh, look at the cool white spider on the pretty purple flower."

tarantula ~ 10/30/10 ~ Corral de Tierra

tarantula
Aphonopelma eutylenum species complex

Just in time for Halloween! This tarantula was crossing the road and of course we stopped. I'm fairly sure it's a male, because some of my numerous pictures clearly show spurs on the underside of the front "knees." As big as he seemed, his cephalothorax was not much bigger than a dime. When I touched his back legs, he'd arch his abdomen up and spread out his spinnerets. He was very camera friendly and would walk toward me when I got down on the ground to take pictures. We tried to herd him to the side of the road, but he seemed to prefer roaming around on the road... which was terribly unfortunate. As we were leaving him to his thing, he got squished by a passing car. I almost cried.

While I believe this is an Aphonopelma eutylenum, I've e-mailed Brent Hendrixson at The American Tarantula Society to confirm and will update this post when I hear back. For more photos, see my Flickr set.

ps 11/01/10 - For other regionally local tarantula sightings, check out Idora Design, Nature Visions, and Dipper Ranch.

pss 11/12/10 - Again, another tarantula post, not necessarily local, Weird Bug Lady's blog post.

pss 11/15/10 - I heard back from Brent after sending a second e-mail without a photo attachment. With his permission, here's what he said, "This is a tough group of spiders. The species belongs to what we call the "Aphonopelma eutylenum" species complex, a group of several closely related species whose identities remain elusive because they are difficult to distinguish (in fact, I think they're more than likely all the same species). I know this isn't terribly helpful, but that's where we're at with this group right now." Thank you, Dr. Hendrixson!

colonial orb weaver ~ 08/04/10 ~ Fort Ord

probable colonial orb weaver on coast live oak
probable Metepeira spinipes (formerly M. grinnelli) on Quercus agrifolia var. agrifolia
Fagaceae

posted 08/14/11 - Last Monday Andy and I were driving home from the grocery store along Sunset Dr. through Asilomar. I noticed an older gentleman on the side of the road with a notebook and apparently counting something in the bushes. It's not often that I see a naturalist-type looking at anything but birds and the ocean around these parts. I made a U-turn and rolled down the window to ask him what he was doing. Come to find out he's from the University of Cincinnati and studies colonial orb weavers. A line of cars was starting to back-up behind me, so I had him quickly write down the name of the spider and off we went. I would have liked to have stayed longer to chat with him, but we had ice cream in the trunk. Hey, I'll admit, lately ice cream has a rather high priority in my life... well, at least higher than some stranger and mysterious spiders.

As I was driving away, it occurred to me that I've seen massive groups of spiders that could be considered colonial. They seemed to be particularly abundant last year at Fort Ord, San Carlos Beach, and Elkhorn Slough. If you saw them, you'd remember them, too. And, maybe the spiders I found were the same ones this fellow studies?

I was not successful tracking down an ID last year. The abdomen looked like an Araneus to me, but the webs didn't seem right. Instead of a clear orb-shaped web, the ones I saw looked like massive tangles stretching several feet between branches, interlocking with other spiders' webs. I kept thinking of that old study of spiders administered various drugs, and it looked like a bunch of spiders overdosed on caffeine. If I looked closely, I could sometimes make out an orb. Plus, each spider seemed to have its own hidey-hole consisting of dried leaves silked together. Clicking on the second pic above enlarges it so that the orb is visible in the lower right quadrant and a second smaller spider retreat is at 10 o'clock to the one I'm pointing. As I searched online for a match, I found something similar on randomtruth's Flickr (also of Nature of Man blog fame). However, his ID of a trashline orb weaver didn't jive with the conical rump I found on BugGuide for Cyclosa conica. I marked it for later and promptly forgot about it.

Now armed with a spider name I had never heard about until last week, I tracked down the Cincinnati fellow and e-mailed him the two photos above and a link to randomtruth's picture. With his permission, here's what Dr. George W. Uetz replied, "Your photos are probably Metepeira spinipes (I say probably, as positive spider ID to the species level requires microscopic examination of genitalia). Both photos are clearly members of the genus Metepeira, and given the location and the fact that it it built a colonial web, it was most likely M. spinipes. The Flickr photo ID is an error, as the "trash line" is actually a string of egg sacs. Cyclosa spp. do replace their "trash line" of prey remains with a string of egg sacs as well, but this one is definitely Metepeira spp."

To follow-up, I looked at other Metepeira found in Monterey County. Here are links to range maps Lynette Schimming created and posted to BugGuide from a compilation of Steve Lew's spiders of CA website and Herbert W. Levi's 1977 MCZ Bulletin: M. crassipes, M. grandiosa, M. spinipes, and M. ventura. There might be more species in the area, but that's all I could find. Available images of these spiders look very similar. I believe not all Metepeira make colonial webs, and that's why Dr. Uetz thought it was probably M. spinipes.

I'm amazed that by stopping and asking what someone was doing on the side of the road, I learned about a spider ID that puzzled me from over a year ago. Go figure.

ps - Strictly for PG-13 laughs, check out this vid parody "Spiders on Drugs".

relative of the Johnson jumping spider
Phidippus sp.
family Salticidae

ps 04/13/10 - Thanks to MObugs' post, I was reminded of my pic from a couple years back. I'm fairly sure this jumping spider is NOT Phidippus johnsoni, although several online sites show remarkable variation within this species (IMHO I believe those IDs are incorrect). As I'm looking into this, I found this nifty quick spider list from UC Berkeley.

This is my first spider and first Fremont Peak SP post to Nature ID. We haven't been back to Fremont Peak in a while since we heard it was closed due to budget cuts; it's nice to see they're still open on a limited basis.