Not many enemies of these spiders want to pursue them among the botanical equivalent of barbed wire. At the Tucson Botanical Gardens I find a favorite place for this species to build its webs is among the leathery, spine-studded leaves of agave plants. The primary criterion seems to be that the spiders do need shade from the unrelenting sun. Nearly any building overhang or dense tangle of vegetation will do for a web location. The spiders do compete over prey items, but skirmishes are rarely protracted. Elizabeth Jakob of the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) has found that up to fifteen individual spiders may share a communal web at any one time, with “membership” changing periodically. This is rarely the case, though, and many specimens will together form nearly contiguous webs that stretch far and wide. The webs of Holocnemus are irregular but decidedly dome-like, at least when one individual spider is off by itself. I find this species to be far more common outdoors than I do indoors here in southern Arizona. distribution of the Marbled Cellar Spider ranges east to at least central Texas, and north to southern Oregon. Because this species closely resembles the common Long-bodied Cellar Spider, Pholcus phalangioides, it is possible that it became established prior to 1974. The earliest known record in North America comes from Sutter County, California in 1974. The Marbled Cellar spider is actually native to the Mediterranean region of Europe. However, this is not true of the Marbled Cellar Spider, Holocnemus pluchei. Indeed, many members of the family Pholcidae do frequent such situations. Cellar spiders are named for their habit of building their webs in cool, dark places such as basements, old mine shafts, wells and the like.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |