Steatoda Triangulosa
One afternoon about a month ago I was at home when the doorbell rang twice followed by urgent knocking. I opened it to see my neighbor’s young son breathless on the porch. “Mom says come quick, there’s a spider you gotta take a picture of!”
This is what responsible parenting is all about. If you have a weird neighbor that photographs insects for a website, don’t just squash bugs when you see them. Call the weird neighbor over instead!
Mark and Tamina Halladay live at the end of my street, just a few meters from the protected wetlands surrounding Utah Lake. Ecogeodemographically speaking, this means they get a better class of insect that I often do: There’s a hundred meters and half a dozen houses between my yard and the wetlands.
This is not the spider I was sent to photograph; they had a 3cm lycosa rabida on their porch complete with young spiderlings on her back, but I could not coax her out of her hiding hole to get a clear photo. While there, however, Tamina mentioned that Mark had cleaned out the garage because he thought they had black widows. Knowing that black widows were uncommon in our neighborhood (but not at all impossible for our county), I offered to take a look. What I got for my trouble was a picture of this gorgeous steatoda triangulosa in her web tending a couple of egg sacs. She’s fully grown at about 5mm long.
Since these spiders put ecological pressure on black widows, I gave the Halladays a quick primer on how awesome steatodae are. I saw them at church last Sunday and was happy to hear that the spiders are no longer in danger of being wiped out by Mark on account of them no longer being in danger of being black widows.
Slowly getting the site back onto an even keel. It's nice to get back into the old posting rhythm.
singingnettle said,
October 23, 2007 @ 9:17 am
What a pretty girl! We have western bud spiders, which look like black widows and eat them and hobos, all over our basement–we also give the “these spiders are our friends so don’t kill them” lecture to friends.
But if I saw that my first thought would be to run to a book to ID it as well.
We did actually have a pretty female black widow in our garage in a neighborhood near Seattle–I knew where she was and it was in a corner I was never going to reach into, so I just left her alone. I thought my chances of tripping and falling and sticking my hand directly in her face if I tried to crawl into the corner to go after her were higher than the chances that she was going to go rabid and run out and attack someone, since they are the most maniacally shy of spiders. Good thing, too.
singingnettle said,
October 23, 2007 @ 9:18 am
I have a very nice harvestman on my photo site today (singingpixel.com on LJ), if you’re interested in taking a look.
David Brady said,
October 23, 2007 @ 11:15 am
singingnettle:
1. I couldn’t find the harvestman at http://www.singingpixel.com or on any of your recent LJ posts.
(I did like your green stinkbug picture though.)
2. I need to link to your site in my blogroll. Which means I need to reinstall the blogroll.
3. you need to register on insectpod.com so I can just make you contributor and you can post links & stuff without getting spamscreened.
Chiad said,
October 24, 2007 @ 12:19 am
You rock. You went out of your way to educate. Not only do you take great pictures, but you’re a great person, too!