It isn’t a surprise that Troy was not cognizant of this species. It’s a small spider, and hides itself and its modest web well among the leafy boughs of trees and shrubs of forests and back yard haunts. If I search my back yard thoroughly in mid-summer, I may find one or two of them among the lowest branches of a pyracantha or cedar elm, but never does the spider or its web flaunt its presence. The out-of-the-way web it builds is oriented in the horizontal plane, so we humans are not as likely to realize we’ve bumped into one in the field, the way we are when we come across the in-your-face webs of ordinary orb weavers like the yellow garden spider or the arabesque orb weaver, both of which brazenly stretch their webs directly across our garden paths. [...]
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This is one of our most beautiful spiders, particularly when adorned in its most attractive phase, with the brownish dorsal abdomen decorated in reddish fringes and a coalescence of white spots that form, at least to francophiles, a fleur de lis, to others a cross roughly similar to the markings of the diadem spider (Araneus diadematus Clerck). But, then, only a fraction of the females of this species are so adorned. Most apparently display an unmarked brownish dorsal abdomen. I have lost the reference for the moment, but one arachnologist was reported to claim that E. ravilla only displays these white spots as a juvenile, and loses them at adulthood. However, the evidence suggests that at least some mature females — including Stephanie’s specimen (our present focus) and a specimen photographed south of Houston by Joe and Elizabeth LeBlanc in 2009, posted below — continue to sport them into adulthood, and probably throughout their natural lives. [...] This spider appeared to have many of the characters of a spider in the Amphinectidae family, Metaltella simoni, which bites but is not known to produce serious medical consequences. As I’m presently studying the Amphinectidae, I asked her to preserve the spider in alcohol and hold it to be picked up at a time and place of mutual convenience. She asked what kind of alcohol was best for that purpose. [...] — BugsInTheNews is a VIEWER-PARTICIPANT WEBSITE. This article by Jerry Cates and Mark Turvey, first published on 4 November 2010, was revised last on 7 July 2012. © Bugsinthenews Vol. 11:11(03) —————————— Theridiidae: triangulate household spider (Steatoda triangulosa); Mark Turvey, League City, TX—17 January 2010 Mark Turvey noticed this spider crossing his driveway in [...] Before you stretch the placid waters of Lake Conroe, a large, inland, freshwater lake in southeast Texas. It is a warm, sunny day, and the breeze smells sweet. You’re ready — to the point of excited impatience — to take your watercraft out for a spin on the water. Years ago, after much research and leg work, you carefully chose Walden Marina, one of seven Flagship Marinas in the United States, as the place on Lake Conroe to berth your boat. To you, the waterways are more than a source of recreation; they’re also a precious natural resource. Like most boaters, you do your part to protect them, and you knew that Allison Harpold, the conscientious, hard-working manager at Walden Marina, does everything in her power to make it as clean and green as possible. [...] — BugsInTheNews is a viewer-participant website. This article by Jerry Cates and Terri, first published on 16 August 2010, was last revised on 6 July 2012. © Bugsinthenews Vol. 11:08(09). —————————————– Common House Spider (Achaearanea tepidariorum) female with egg sac; Terri, Silsbee TX–08.13.2010 Important Links related to the content of this page: (1) Spider [...] Like all things in life, fortunes sometimes favor the spider-eating-snake, and sometimes they favor the snake-eating-spider (and, just in case you hadn’t heard of a snake-eating-spider before, well… read on). [...] The cardinal jumper differs from the Johnson jumper (Phidippus johnsoni), in that both males and females of the cardinal jumper have, instead of the black carapaces of the Johnson jumper, red ones. But that is not unique within the genus Phidippus, as another species (P. whitmani) is also red, or marked with red, on both carapace and dorsal abdomen. The synonym, McCook’s jumper, was thought to denote a unique species distinguished by having two prominent, dark, longitudinally oriented, lateral stripes (or bands) on the dorsal abdomen, subdivided along their lengths into at least three somewhat distinct sections. [...] The positioning of the eyes (see Ubick et al, [2005], pg. 214) is consistent with spiders in the genus Phidippus, but the pattern of the dark marking on the dorsal abdomen is not typical for a P. johnsoni female, as described by Kaston, or by the Peckhams. This may be a female, though based on the morphology of its palps, which are not markedly swollen the way a male’s palps typically are in other spider families, and the absence of any suggestion of emboli (one has to look at the distal palps on both of the photos Galina supplied, as the first photo, above, does seem to show some minor distal swelling). However, in the Salticidae family, the emboli of the male’s palps are often not remarkably different from the distal segments of the female palp. [...] According to Dr. Breene, the common name for this spider, as accepted by the American Arachnological Society’s Common Names Committee–which Breene chaired–was the Johnson jumper, and that is the name I have used since. After all, when we use a common name for a spider, we should try to be consistent. If the same spider is called a redback jumper by one person, a redbacked spider by another, and a Johnson jumper by yet another, only confusion can result. And anything that reduces confusion is good, right? Well, regardless, it should be noted that many if not most professional arachnologists, such as my good friend, Dr. Pierre Paquin, wax quite unenthusiastic about the idea of granting even semi-official status to the common names of our spiders. [...] |
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