I’m a bit frustrated — this stupid knee doesn’t allow me to walk on rough ground. I can handle floors and sidewalks, but this part of my yard where Mary has been planting new berry bushes is mostly inaccessible to me. Yesterday, Mary tells me she has spotted some interesting new spiders on the leaves. Can I come look? Not without risking a fall.
It would be a bit much for me to hand her my Canon D8 with the 100mm macro lens, so instead I gave her a clip-on magnifying lens for her iPhone, which she was already comfortable using, and she went off into No Man’s Land and got a bunch of very nice photos of these tiny (less than 3mm) guys, and left me feeling useless.
Anyway , what she had found was a lot of meshweavers, small spiders that put down sheet webs, which they use to catch smaller prey, like aphids and leafhoppers. Meshweavers are a gardener’s friend, so it’s good to see them hard at work protecting our raspberries. This is a dwarf spider, also called a money spider:
And this is a pair of dimorphic meshweavers. One species, but males and females look dramatically different.
Clearly, it’s time for me to hang up my pretense of being an arachnologist and teach Mary how to use the D8. I’ll just park myself in a rocking chair on the deck and watch her have all the fun.
Spiders have what looks to be a metallic sheen. Is that why they are called money spiders?
It’s cool Mary shares your interest in spiders.
No, they’re called that because of a folk notion that finding spiders in your hair is a sign that you’ll be coming into money, and these guys are so tiny and use ballooning to get around that there’s a good chance that any spider landing in your hair could be one of these.
I’ve seen spiders paragliding around my house once in a while. Very tiny. I also catch glimpses of something rappelling into my upper visual field occasionally. These?
When I took botany so many years ago I recall labs where we were turned loose on flowers with dissecting microscopes and I noticed little critters crawling around inside the flowers. Spider food?
Useless?
Who’s doing the blogging here?
Buck up!
What Fishy said! I may not comment all that often, but I do check in daily!
PZ, remember patience is a virtue. Don’t be so hard on yourself (literally and figuratively). Take time to heal more completely before you ‘take the vehicle off-road’. I think and hope your knee will continue to improve with care, time and physical therapy.
And, this business of feeling sorry for yourself and calling yourself useless is unwarranted. To reinforce @4 fishy’s comment, this article itself proves you are far from useless. In it you have taught us more about spiders which is important to me and others, too. Don’t tear up your arachnologist credentials yet.
As a dear friend once advised: Talk fast, walk slow and keep on truckin’
I’m confident Mary would say “helped” not “replaced”.
The “clip-on magnifying lens” for iPhone sounds interesting. I’m going to look into that although I can’t think of any need I have for such a thing.
The little spiders are fascinating. It seems we don’t have meshweavers in Marin County, CA though we definitely have a lot of different kinds of spiders. We practically breed them in our backyard. They come with the bird habitat.
Educating people about spiders as you are doing here and as #7.shermanj has noted is definitely useful and appreciated.
@3.Hemidactylus :
Pollinators? Can spiders also serve as pollinators? I can’t really think of any reason why not….
Locally there’s a an arachnid that serves as a useful biocontrol damaging a woody weed – the Gorse spider mite FWIW.
Symbionts or mutually beneficial connection with the spiders getting protection and shelter in exchange for devouring insects that eat and harm the host plants?
Get one of those walkers with a seat. You can use it to stabilize your gait and help reacquire your ability to traverse unstable terrain. Also, sitting may make for better pics until you’ve fully healed.
You can get a clip on magnifying lens from Amazon for about $20. I used to use it a fair amount before I got the Canon, which is about two orders of magnitude more expensive. I recommend always starting cheap, and go bigger if you get hooked.
Another way to look at this story is that I’m trying to get Mary addicted.
That top one showing swollen pedipalps?
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[OT]
You do that for the USA, and for “Scarizona”. So, you know, your cred is not good.
Sending the wife to do the hard part?
The lizard people in Robert Scheckley’s story would aporove!
Having taught Mary to use the Canon I suspect you may end up with a lot of pictures of birds, flowers and fruit as well as your beloved spiders. But maybe not, I can use our Canon, but it’s a little large for my hands for really comfortable use, and I’m happy to let Mr J carry it around instead of me. Back in the days of film my brothers decided to buy me a decent camera for my twenty-first birthday, and I ended up with a Zenit, instead of the Pentax they’d been planning on buying, because it was smaller so more comfortable to use. The Zenit could take the Pentax lenses, and I didn’t manage to wear it out – apparently the build wasn’t as sturdy – because it got nicked by a cliche of a burglar. Saved the brothers a few quid with my choice too.
I guess those spiders will go on hanging around the fruit bushes as they sound like an ideal location for them, so they’ll likely still be there when your knee is up to the trip.
In the UK money spiders are generally red, I suspect because they show up better against hair, though I haven’t seen one in years. Possibly because of population declines, but just as likely because I don’t do as much crawling around in fields as I used to.
I read that as “Monkey spiders” and though it was a nice, albeit odd, nod to spider monkeys.
I like the pictures here. The SLR would be an awesome tool in her hands.
Way back in the ’70s, I first learned photography on a lovely old Pentax.I liked it, and I might still have it stashed away in a cardboard box. But I could never go back to a film camera.
@ ^ PZ Myers : I wonder if you can even get film developed anymore and if so where? Chemists and, of couse, special photo shops used to do it but are they still around and doing that?
LOL.
You can still get film developed but most places that used to take film, don’t any more.
I still use film although I use my cell phone camera a lot more.
The last place I took a roll of film was a Walgreens about 15 miles from my house, in a place I otherwise never go to. It has to be two special trips, one to deliver the film and one to get the photos back and pay for them.
I’ve got a roll of film now and am hoping to find a closer place. So far, nothing has worked.
I’ve heard that film is making something of a comeback in the last few years.
I feel the pain. I gave up macrophotography years ago when my knees got too rubbery to kneel and my hands too shaky to hold the camera and the lens still enough to focus precisely.
Another white male replaced! Who says the Great Replacement Theory has no evidence supporting it?
Oh. It was voluntary, so it doesn’t fit the theory. That’s different. Never mind.