I made my usual rounds of the house, seeking spiders, today. In particular, I have my eyes on this:

It’s some kind of twiggy bush growing near my house — I have no idea what it is, my resident plant-identifier is off in Colorado, neglecting my needs — but what you can’t see in this, as in all the shrubberies around my house, is that there are delicate lines of silk connecting all the branches. It’s true, I look in my yard with all the newly budded plants around it, and all I see are frames for holding spider silk. I stared at that for about a half hour, possibly making the neighbors wonder if I was already going mental, tracing each branch and every strand of silk, hoping to find the perpetrator.

I did not.

I will be checking regularly throughout this spring, and I’m certain that at some point I will catch them in the act. It’s just a matter of time, and they will be mine.

I did find other spiders on the wall, though. The usual zebra jumpers and asiatic wall jumping spiders…

…but also this mysterious young lady. Curious. She looks a bit like Attulus, but so dark. I see a lot of variation in color, though, so I don’t know.

Then, I struck gold. I found the first Parasteatoda specimen I’ve seen outdoors since last year. She even killed a mosquito for me!

I want you to know, though, that in order take her picture, I had to get down on my knees in the dirt. Then I had to get even lower and lie on my side to get the right angle. I think it’s going to be laundry day.

As usual, the spider photos are tucked away on Instagram, iNaturalist, and Patreon if you want to see them.

I wouldn’t do that to you. This is a single line of webbing on a metal signpost.

I wandered around on a walk this afternoon, and while I didn’t find any spiders, I’ve started noticing that everything everywhere is held together with delicate tracings of silk, fueling my new hypothesis that what’s really holding the planet together is the work of spiders.

I haven’t yet found any spider associated with this particular strand of silk, although there were many similar lines — therefore, since it’s invisible and holds all of earth together, it must be Jesus. I’ll keep looking and see if I can get a photo of Him. (Note: more likely to be a Her, and not a vertebrate at all, which leads to some provocative corollaries to my hypothesis.)

I went all around my house, looking high and low for spiders. The good news is that my house is covered with spider food. Gnats, flies, skeeters, bugs of all sort clinging to the fences and walls and window screens. The predators can’t be far behind!

If I were a spider, I’d want to be here, pigging out on the deliciousness.

And the spiders are here! The first spiders I’ve seen outdoors this spring!

I found a half dozen Salticus scenicus scampering about, looking fit and healthy — maybe too healthy, because they were zooming around at high speed, making it difficult to take pictures of them. I took a few, anyway, and posted them on my Patreon page and Instagram.

The game is afoot! Spider season is upon us!

Well, I found it exciting anyway. One of the problems I’ve faced in my new research on local spiders is that I can’t tell two species apart, Parasteatoda tepidariorum and Parasteatoda tabulata. Even the expert sources I consult usually discriminate by dissecting their genitals, which is not useful for me, since I want to study live animals and embryos. There is one suggestive hint, though: P. tabulata builds funky little nests in their webs in the wild, while P. tepidariorum apparently does not. It’s a behavioral distinction, and I have no idea how definitive it is, but at least it’s an angle.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to see nest building in the lab. I’ve tried throwing in miscellaneous office debris, like stuff from a whole punch and a paper shredder, but they never pay attention to it. Maybe all of my lab animals are P. tep? Maybe I’m providing the wrong kinds of nest material? I dunno.

So yesterday, in a forlorn, half-assed try, I noticed all the fine wood shavings in the containers for wax worms, their food, and I sprinkled a few small shavings in the cage for one of the new generation of spiders, not yet named, and went home. I’d spread them around, and even avoided the place where she was currently nesting (spiders have preferred spots to hang out in).

Today, presto…she had gathered the majority of shavings into one central place, and had built a nest. Isn’t it beautiful?

You can’t see her in there, because she’s hiding. You can see her brown egg sac, near the top center of the nest. I’ve also highlighted the cobweb by misting it with water. I guess I was just failing to give them the correct home-building materials before.

This is excellent news! Now I have to give all of the spiders in my colony some wood shavings, and see if they fall into two groups, nest-builders and non-nest-builders. I have a student who proposed studying this distinction this summer, if that still happens in this age of pandemic, and one thing we’ll have to try is a nest construction time-lapse — that really was assembled overnight, so it’s speedy, but it was done in the dark, so we’ll have to play with cameras and lighting to see if we can observe it.

The bad news is that when Tabitha — she has a name now — dies, we’re going to have to dissect her and observe her genitals very closely, to independently confirm her species.

Otherwise, though, this is so exciting! Thrilling, even! All the spiders get wood shavings! Everyone gets wood shavings! You can have wood shavings! Come on, you’ve got to admit that complex nest construction behavior in an invertebrate is fun stuff, even if it’s totally unsurprising, given that spiders have always been elaborate builders.

P.S. You might actually be able to see a bit of spider anatomy poking out in one place, but I’ll leave it as an exercise for you to Find the Spider.

My theory is that spiders are, in fact, muppets. I present as evidence:

QED.