Apologies if you have already discussed this PZ, but what questions are you hoping to answer with your spider army?
moarscienceplzsays
StevoR, I am certainly not an expert in spider identification, but since Latrodectus has 34 species, several of which are native to North America, and since many of them have reddish hourglass figures on the females, I would think that Occam’s Razor would make it fairly unlikely that PZ would choose a photo of a species that is literally on the other side of the world from him.
malleefowlsays
You seem to have a problem with the spiders running away. Have you tried CO2. We used it to control Drosophila. Anesthetize them first and then sort them on a small CO2 table under the microscope,
Andrew
Have you thought of using vacuum tweezers to pick them up. It might be possible to modify a set to pick up the baby spiders and deliver them directly to the vial you use to house them. It would save chasing escapees all over the lab
That’s definitely a red back spider (Latrodectus hasselti)* at the start! That distinctive red hourglass pattern. That’s not one of yours is it PZ?
Oh & is that the skeleton of Tom Thumb doing guard duty there?
.* Wikipage : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redback_spider
Apologies if you have already discussed this PZ, but what questions are you hoping to answer with your spider army?
StevoR, I am certainly not an expert in spider identification, but since Latrodectus has 34 species, several of which are native to North America, and since many of them have reddish hourglass figures on the females, I would think that Occam’s Razor would make it fairly unlikely that PZ would choose a photo of a species that is literally on the other side of the world from him.
You seem to have a problem with the spiders running away. Have you tried CO2. We used it to control Drosophila. Anesthetize them first and then sort them on a small CO2 table under the microscope,
Andrew
Have you thought of using vacuum tweezers to pick them up. It might be possible to modify a set to pick up the baby spiders and deliver them directly to the vial you use to house them. It would save chasing escapees all over the lab