I have an office spider, Diana, who lives in a display case with a wooden climbing frame and a floor made of left over calcareous sand and shells from my aquarist days. Today I found that she’d seized stuff from the ground, like this:

…lifted them up to her web up high, and build a hemispherical nest, which she was snuggled down inside of. Clever girl.

If you want to see the nest, I put a photo on Patreon (reminder: I have a patreon account I use to try to pay off our legal debt) and also on Instagram.

I went off to feed the spiders this morning, and as I was going out the door, Mary asked if I needed any more egg sacs. “I hope not,” I replied, because I’ve got so many baby spiders to tend that I’m not sure what I would do if I had another round of hatchlings. So she cursed me. I found 7 nice new Parasteatoda egg sacs, and 2 new Steatoda triangulosa sacs. I tell you, I’m getting so good at breeding spiders I am currently oscillating between two states.

The only thing that will save me is that I expect, from past experience, that about half the egg sacs will contain only infertile eggs. It’s not my fault, the females are picky, and some of them constantly friendzone^* all their suitors. Three of them are definitely from non-virginal, proven breeders, though, so I’m anticipating dealing with about 300 more babies soon.

By the way, I like to regularly remind you all that I have a Patreon, and if you want to see a photo of a hungry baby at the table, sign up!

^*“friendzone”, in the native Spider, is synonymous with “murder and eat”. I suspect MRAs/Incels of being native Spider speakers, which has led to all kinds of confusion and erroneous ideas about the human version of the word.

It’s time to get an apartment of your own!

On the left in this vial you can see the egg sac; on the right the black shriveled thing is a mealworm that was consumed by Mom. Mom has been moved out already. All those little black dots everywhere? Baby spiders. I’m going to have to go remove that foam plug now, and quickly sort ’em all out.

We’re about to embark on our mission for the day: road trip to Big Stone, Traverse, and Grant county, seeking spiders. They’re out there, the only question is whether we find them.

Then we get back to more Skepticon!

Mary and I went on a little spider hunting loop yesterday, looking for Argiope. We took a southeastern route, heading off to Swift county, then detouring a bit south to clip through Chippewa county, then due east to Kandiyohi, and finally north and back west through Pope county to home. Our strategy was simple: drive through farm country on state and county roads, keeping an eye on the ditches that parallel all roads around here. When we saw lots of grass and brush filling the ditch, and when there was a safe place to pull over in the car, we’d stop and stroll about, looking for webs.

We really needed an “I Brake for Spiders” bumper sticker, because we were probably annoyingly slow. Good thing the roads were nearly empty!

One catch to this approach is that good grassy roadsides were scarce. Apparently, good Republican farmers have little to do and lots of tractors, so they trim everything. Have you ever seen a drainage ditch that looks like a manicured lawn? We did, everywhere. The best places had 1-2 meters of grass, where we’d walk in and be in the weeds to chest height or over our head. Actually, the best places were nature preserves and restored prairie.

We persevered, though, and found Argiope in every county we visited. They’re common, but they really don’t seem to like the kind of place where big bipedal mammals frequently bumble around. Living near people is OK, but they better not ever come over to visit.
So here’s one from Swift county:

Classic Argiope aurantia. Big, black and yellow, and a meter wide orb web with stabilimentum zig-sagging down the center.
Chippewa county is the emptiest place we visited, lacking any large towns and consisting of nothing but farms. They do have Argiope aurantia, though.

Kandiyohi county is kind of the inverse. It does contain one big town, Willmar, which was right in the way of our route, and Argiope does not like cities much. We finally found one as we were driving away by our usual expedient of pulling into farm access roads where the residents weren’t overzealous lawn fanatics.

We’d actually planned to hit up a couple more counties, but the weather turned grim, all gray and rainy. Even as I write this I’m listening to thunder. We’d decided to skip a northern loop of our drive and go home through Pope county, where we found Argiope trifasciata in a nature preserve.

One cool thing about this one is that there were two other webs in the same little patch, only a few centimeters away, and they were occupied by males, hopeful consorts I would guess.

We’re going to do it again next weekend, aiming for a western and northern loop, passing through Big Stone, Traverse, and Grant counties. Also on our list is another trip to the Ecostation in Ottertail county.

I have received a mission request from iNaturalist. I have chosen to accept it. It did not self-destruct after I read it.

Records of Argiope aurantia (Yellow Garden Spider) and Argiope trifasciata (Banded Garden Spider) for 2020 started getting posted a couple of weeks ago. These two species are some of the most photographed spiders in Minnesota thanks to the female spider’s habit of sitting in her web in sunny locations like prairies and gardens. These species are easy to distinguish from one another and no other orb weavers match either their size or bold patterns.

Last fall the members of this project joined forces to find 13 new county records for Argiope aurantia and 12 new county records for Argiope trifasciata. But we still haven’t recorded these species in every county in Minnesota so I’m throwing down the gauntlet once again! Can we make these two species the first two spiders known from every one of Minnesota’s 87 counties?

The following 35 34 counties have no records of Argiope aurantia:
Aitkin, Beltrami, Big Stone, Carlton, Cass, Clearwater, Cook, Crow Wing, Grant, Houston, Hubbard, Itasca, Kanabec, Kittson, Koochiching, Lake, Lake of the Woods, Mahnomen, Marshall, Meeker, Mower, Murray, Nobles, Otter Tail, Pennington, Pine, Polk, Pope, Red Lake, Redwood, Roseau, St. Louis, Swift, Traverse, Wadena

The following 34 counties have no records of Argiope trifasciata:
Aitkin, Benton, Big Stone, Cass, Clearwater, Cook, Dodge, Fillmore, Freeborn, Goodhue, Hubbard, Itasca, Kanabec, Kandiyohi, Koochiching, Lake of the Woods, Mahnomen, Marshall, Martin, McLeod, Mille Lacs, Morrison, Murray, Norman, Pennington, Pope, Red Lake, Roseau, Sibley, Steele, Swift, Todd, Wadena, Wilkin

I’ll update this post as new county records get established. Happy spidering! (yeah, that’s a thing!)

You know what this means — ROAD TRIP! I noticed that West Central Minnesota counties are largely represented on the list. In my region, only Stevens (where UMM is), Douglas (where the larger city of Alexandria is), and Stearns (St Cloud) have had records for these species. Mary and I figure we can hit up 3 or 4 neighboring counties and make a small dent in that list today, and get out and explore at the same time. We might also squeeze in our local grocery run and have a picnic. We can’t lose!

We made a trial run last night, just here in Stevens county. We found lots of Argiope just in the grassy ditches that run alongside the highways around here, so this ought to be easy. If any of my fellow Minnesotans in more distant counties want to join in, please do.

If you don’t know what these spectacular spiders look like, I posted some photos on Patreon and Instagram.