Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Spider Diversity in Zone 1

Today I started on Zone 1 of the Backyard Biodiversity Project.

The stairs to the front doorway are populated by a variety of spiders. For a small insect it is a predatory mine field. Some of the hunters are only a millimeter in size while others are giants at a quarter of an inch.

There was a juvenile black widow, a corner spider, cobweb spiders and more. All of them valuable insect predators. In their webs were moths, earwigs, gnats and a click beetle.

This small spider is 2-3 millimeters and hiding in a hollow on the stucco wall.

There was no web. Identifying these small arachnids is a challenge. If you know what this spider is let me know. Leave a comment.

Other spiders:

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If your meaning the spider in the picture you have on the web site, I have three of them, plus their eggs in glass bottles with the area and date on them. The ones that I have are the Brown Widow with an orange hour glass marking on their underside. These are all over our area in the city of Orange, Ca. They do not make a web like most people are used to seeing. The spider hides behimd a web that is very small and clouded. It's about one half inch by one half inch. They are mostly under the lip of flower pots, trash cans, chairs. and tables. The newly hatched babies are so small you can hadly see them. They easily go thru the cracks of the houses. They are in papers lying around homes, and also, under the furniture. Their bite is much stronger then the Black Widow, but they let out less venom. But, you can become very ill nevertheless.
BEV.

Keri Dearborn said...

While African brown widows have become a species to be aware of in Southern California, I do not believe this is a widow of any kind. This is a spider species that remains quite small and is found on dry hillsides in leaf litter.