Misunderstood spider...

Here at the ALE lab we are very interested in spiders! They are generalist predators which means: they eat many different things, especially agricultural and house hold pests! Since they hunt a variety of pests we consider them to be important biological control agents, meaning they eat pests for us so we don't have have to use as many insecticides.

Spiders may be among the most misunderstood of arthropods. Most people have heard about the brown recluse to be dangerous, however much of that information is misleading. For starters...the range of the brown recluse just barely reaches the South-western tip of Ohio, so Ohioans should not fear!

Wikipedia

Wired.com recently published an article regarding the poor misunderstood brown recluse..check it out!

LINK: Why You Need Not Fear the Poor, Misunderstood Brown Recluse Spider

Also...let's not forget, jumping spiders are just adorable.

Arthropod in the Spotlight (IN SPACE!)

Female Phidippus johnsoni  (Wikipedia)

The first jumping spider to survive a 100 day stay on the International Space Station died on December 3rd at the Smithsonian. The species chosen to make the trip was Phidippus johnsoni (The red-backed jumping spider), which is a species commonly found in Western North America. The spider was launched into space as part of a student experiment to study its adaptability to the weightlessness of space. The spider was able to account for the effects of zero-gravity and catch it's prey. Upon it's return to earth in October it was able to readjust to gravity. The spider lived 10 months, which was the normal lifespan. Two other spiders have been to space, where they became the first spiders to spin webs in space in 1973 on Skylab, the United State's first space station.

www.collectspace.com/news/

www.cnn.com (Article about the original experiment)

Great pictures of this species!

Insect in the spotlight: Agenioideus nigricornis

Australians have a tiny wasp to thank for keeping the population of a dangerous spider in check. The redback spider hunting wasp (Agenioideus nigricornis) attacks...wait for it...redback spiders. Bites by redback spiders, which are closely related to black widows, cause severe pain, sweating, weakness, vomiting, and in rare cases can result in death.

A redback spider-hunting wasp dragging its paralyzed prey back to its nest. Photo by Florian and Peter Irwin.

The wasp, described in 1775, had only been known by it's scientific name until just recently when a 9 year old boy (budding entomologist perhaps??) observed a wasp dragging a redback spider to it's nest. The boy's father photographed the event, collected the organisms and sent them off to be analysed. The wasps sting and paralyze their prey then drag the spider back to it's nest where it lays an egg on the live spider. The egg soon hatches and the larvae feeds on the spider (watch Alien if you would like another example of this behavior with other species) This newly discovered behavior led to the common name of the wasp, and has also been very interesting to entomologists. The redback spiders have spread from Australia to Japan and New Zealand, and perhaps these wasps could be introduced to control the populations of the spiders in those areas. Though I am sure there is MUCH research to be done before those options can be considered.

Citations:
huffingtonpost.com
ouramazingplanet.com

Spider Camp 2012!

Greetings, readers! I am currently in Highlands, North Carolina, for some additional training to help with my research. I am taking a spider identification course with Dr. Kefyn Catley from Western Carolina University, an expert arachnologist and evolutionary biologist.

The course has been a great mix of lectures on spider morphology, taxonomy, and ecology, while the rest of most days have been spent outdoors collecting as many different spiders as possible. In my own work in urban Cleveland I have become familiar with many spider families: wolf spiders, jumping spiders, sheet-web weavers, ground spiders...the list goes on! But the southern Appalachians have truly shown themselves to be one of the most diverse habitats in the world for spiders, where I've seen species we'll never have in Ohio. One of the most fascinating is the lampshade spider, Hypochilus pococki. This belongs to an ancient group of spiders which still retains some ancestral traits such as two pairs of book lungs (most spiders you see today, excluding tarantulas and their closer relatives, only have one pair). They make some really amazing webs along rock outcrops and caves which resemble lampshades. This is a photo taken with my phone, so you may not be able to make out the spider sitting in the middle of the circle.

However, I've also noticed some interesting overlap between spiders I've collected here in the mountainous forests and those I've collected for my own research in Cleveland. Some of the most common species in my urban sites, including Pardosa milvina (wolf spider), Frontinella communis (sheet-web weaver), and Leucauge venusta (long-jawed orb weaver), are also very abundant down here in the Appalachians (L. venusta is absolutely everywhere!). Granted, this research station is slightly developed with a small town close by, but it is interesting to note how some species are so widely distributed and abundant in two very different types of habitats. Their presence highlights the interplay between habitat management and structure along with species behavior and developmental traits which allow for widespread distribution.

I am here for the rest of the week, completing my collection and identifying specimens. Spider identification is notoriously difficult, often requiring a microscope.

And beer and Triskets.