You know this podish-sortacast that Freethoughtblogs runs? At the end of the last one, we were talking about new topics, and I casually threw out “SPIDERS” expecting everyone would actually pick something of broader general interest. The jokes on me, because guess what we’re talking about on Saturday?
I can probably think of something to say. Whether it is of interest is a different question.
I have turned in all my grades, and it’s beginning to sink in that there will not be a relaxing summer of relaxation. We’ve got an arachnology conference coming up at the end of June — the core data is all done, but we’ve got some details to fill in and lots of pretty photos to take, and we have an ongoing project in putting together a staging series. We’re also going to make some field trips throughout the summer to get out of the lab and see some sunshine and more exotic spiders. I’m also reviving my course in developmental ecology next spring, so I’ve got to do all the prep work for that this summer.
I just want to take a nap.
Isn’t technology wonderful?
Here it is, the aforementioned CT scan of a living spider egg sac (probably a theridiid of some kind)! 18 second scan taken at @BeckmanInst. I'll keep the sac to see if the babies hatch okay after x-ray exposure before releasing them back into the wild. https://t.co/uebbeD0lCC pic.twitter.com/9fnJdbtQ6l
— Josh Gibson, Ph.D. (@DrStrangeAnt) May 11, 2023
That reminds me, I have many balls of spiders to tend to this morning.
Started a big project today — we have a fate in mind for all these spiders my lab is churning out. It will be an interesting fate for me, but alas, not at all healthy for the spiders. I’ll be keeping my Patreon followers informed, the rest of you will have to wait until the Fall.
I’m going to be redoubling my spider farming efforts for a while. I literally had baby spiders nesting in my beard this morning, and I just now had one crawl out of my shirt cuff. It’s a good thing I like the little fellas. Which makes it sad that this kind of a meatgrinder project. I’m going to be the Cruella DeVille of spiders.
I have realized that the way I raise spiders, in a plastic container with a 2-dimensional wooden frame assembled from coffee stirrers and hot glue, means that the spiders build cobwebs constrained to only 2 dimensions. Now I’m thinking it would be easier to study the rules they use to make these networks. Hmm…another student project?
This photo was shot with my iPhone. I think I could get something better with my Canon R and a lens opened wide, to f/1.4 or thereabouts, and a dark background set way back and out of focus. I may have to do some photography experiments.
Today is officially the last day of instruction, but there won’t be much instruction going on — it’s all administrative stuff for me, acquainting students with the record of their past performance, pointing at the specter of the imminent final exam like a ghost of Christmases yet to be, polishing up that final exam and posting it for them to procrastinate and worry over, the usual bad time at the end of a difficult school year.
Next year will be better, right?
It could be worse. Look at these spider photoreceptors!
It turns out that if spiders aren’t properly fed, their photoreceptors start to die off.
Researchers looked at the bold jumping spider (Phidippus audax), a common species that relies very much on light-sensitive photoreceptors in its large eyes to spot prey. When the spiders don’t get enough nutrients, these photoreceptors can be lost.
“Photoreceptors are energetically costly,” says biologist Elke Buschbeck from the University of Cincinnati. “It’s hard to keep up with their energy needs.”
“If you deprive them of nutrition, the system fails. It’s the functional equivalent of the macula in our eyes.”
See, if I don’t have enough research time to take care of my spider colony, they might go blind. I’ll run that by the administration and see if I can get a reduction in teaching load.*
*Note: it will not work.
I set up a simple pit trap in my garden. It worked! Got some spiders!
Eight thumbs up from me.
For the last few years, we’ve been graced with regular summertime visits by cat-faced spiders, Araneus gemmoides. They’re great big orbweavers, usually no trouble at all, although last year one of them took over our deck, stringing webs over the doors. We let her. When you’re that beautiful, you can get away with anything.
One of the reasons they’re no trouble is that they just lurk, and then when winter arrives, they die. Last year’s visitor crept up above our back door and left an egg sac in a dark corner. Here it is!
We got a step ladder to get closer, and I poked a lens right in there. The sac was partially torn open on one side (predation?), so I got a good view of the eggs inside.
Those are definitely spider eggs, but they aren’t very far along in development. It’s been chilly and snowy for the last few weeks, so it’s not surprising that they haven’t matured much. Maybe Minnesota will be kind and bring us a real spring soon?
I’ll keep you informed about this developing subject!
Last month, I thought I’d found a color morph in S. triangulosa: some recently caught wild spiders from Wisconsin that were almost solid black, with just a hint of the standard pattern. I figured I’d be able to do some crosses this summer and see if it was heritable.
Now I don’t need to! Look at the difference a month in the lab environment makes.
[I try not to splash spiders in your face here. You’ll have to look it up on Instagram or Patreon.]
That’s the same spider, almost a month apart. Now it looks all the other spiders I’ve got. I suspect it’s got to be something about the change in diet, from whatever they were finding in a garage to a steady diet of fruit flies and mealworms.
They were caught in Wisconsin, where they’d been living on cheese curds, brats, and La Croix, probably.
Also note that this spider has made a couple of egg sacs. The one in the top right is a half-assed mess, only a few eggs only partially wrapped in a thin skein of silk.
