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USDA Forest Service
Daniel Boone
National Forest
1700 Bypass Road
Winchester, KY 40391
Phone: 859-745-3100
FAX: 859-744-1568
Education: A Naturalist’s Journal
Steve Kickert, Information Specialist, U.S. Forest Service
April 15, 2005
SPIDER EXPERIENCE
I drove to work in a fog this morning - literally. The moisture laden air softened the edges of everything I passed. Gray pavement blended into green grass that faded into dark trunks of trees that blurred into faint blue sky. If ever there was a day when it was apparent that all of nature is connected, it was today.
There was one exception. In fallow
fields, back-lit spider webs jumped out from the haze. They were not
the great webs of orb weavers that all of us have admired when covered
with morning dew. These were the size of softballs, and there was little
to recommend them. But what they lacked in form and size they made up
for in numbers. It seemed as if every bush,
or weed large enough to branch, had a web hanging in it. Why had I never
noticed them before?
I pulled off next to an abandoned wildlife opening
and walked into the wet vegetation for a closer look and quickly discovered
that, far from lacking form, they all adhered to a strict building code.
Each web was placed three to five feet above the ground and consisted
of two platforms built one above the other and suspended by a maze of
silken trusses. The suspension system reminded me of a tree house
I once built. I had no concept of
engineering, but figured that, if I nailed enough boards to each other,
eventually something would stick.
I inspected a dozen webs before finding one of the architects. It was clinging to the stalk of a dead goldenrod, perhaps hoping that something weighing less than two-hundred and ten pounds would visit its lair. Little bigger than the tip of a pen, it had three alternating white, black and white stripes extending down its abdomen. I collected it (alive) and placed it into a small, plastic container, hoping I might be able to identify it.
Back at the office I began searching for name. In our culture, names equal knowledge. It doesn't matter that after fifty-two years of ignorance I'd learned that there have been thousands of fascinating, web-spinning spider living right beneath my nose. Experience without a name is only half the package.
Fortunately,
finding the name/knowledge was not as difficult as I'd expected. The
webs were the most valuable clue. Spiders that build platform webs are
known as sheet-web spiders and belong to the family Linyphiidae. This
narrowed the search to a few hundred. Within that family are the spiders
that create double webs. These are known as "bowl
and
doily" spiders. The upper sheet is bowl shaped and the spider often hangs
underneath it, protected by the lower "doily".
Captured prey are wrapped in silk and left hanging from the upper bowl.
These suspended corpses reminded one naturalist of aerial acrobats hanging
from the ceiling of a circus tent.
The alternating white and black stripes identified my spider as Frontinella pyramitela. I had the full package.
Now you have half the package. It's up to you to go out on the next foggy morning to get the experience that will allow you to know the "bowl and doily" spider. Don't wait fifty-two years.
