#SpiderSunday: several of the spiders I met on that one warm day last week! A running crab spider (_Philodromus_), a bold jumping spider (_Phidippus audax_), some kind of crab spider in tribe Coriarachnini (_Bassaniana_?), and a good old zebra jumping spider (_Salticus scenicus_) with what looks like most of a mesh-web weaver (family Dictynidae).

New research from the Hebets Lab at University of Nebraska Lincoln: _Agelenopsis_ grass spiders in noisy urban environments weave webs with built-in noise dampening—as opposed to their rural cousins, who built more sensitive webs when researchers turned up the volume.

From the NYT article linked below:

> “While animal sensory systems can, and do, certainly adapt over evolutionary time to changing environmental conditions, this takes time,” Dr. Hebets said. “Behavioral changes, however, can be immediate.”

This offers an intriguing tangent: webs are part of a spider's sensory apparatus but are constantly re-built, and behavioural plasticity lets them "evolve" much faster—an evolution you can't track by looking at physical traits alone.

Anecdotally, _Agelenopsis_ are masters at adapting their flat sheet webs to even the unlikeliest urban environments! So it's not a surprise they are adaptable in other ways as well.

Paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.041

NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/22/science/spiders-webs-noise-pollution.html // https://archive.ph/Mu7KJ

Two Gray Wall Jumping Spiders (Menemerus bivittatus), female and male, spotted at Springleaf Park Connector, Singapore on 14 Dec 2024. A common spider, found in both urban areas and parks.

On iNaturalist:
- https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/255061504
- https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/255061505

A Thin-legged Wolf Spider (genus Pardosa) spotted at Ulu Sembawang Park Connector, Singapore on 24 Nov 2024. A common spider, here seen carrying an egg pouch on the abodomen.

On iNaturalist [ https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/254289654 ].

#SpiderSunday: Look who molted!

Got quite the shock just now when I saw my pet _Parasteatoda_ had made an egg sac!!

She has molted since I caught her, so it's not fertilized, she just made it on her own initiative. I didn't think she was full grown! I'm just very surprised. Uh…happy Valentine's Day?

#BREAKING: my pet _Larinioides_ orbweaver is almost certainly a juvenile male! The palps are way too bulbous for a female's, I think.

Anyway, here e is chowing down on eir fruit flies.

The #jumpingspider #Pseudeuophrys #lanigera (#Salticidae, #Araneae) is a #species that, according to Heiko Bellmann: (Der Kosmos Spinnenführer.2016), originally was #native to #southwestEurope, but has #spread in #CentralEurope since the 1950s, where it lives in the area of ​​human #buildings. According to L. J. Ramseyer & R. L. Crawford (2017) it occurs in #NorthAmerica as a #neozoon.

© #StefanFWirth #Berlin 2025

Reference
L. J. Ramseyer & R. L. Crawford (2017): https://doi.org/10.3956/2017-93.4.226

#SpiderSunday: a tantalizing glimpse inside the abdomen of the _Pholcus_ cellar spider. ???

Els saltícids són petits aràcnids que capturen les seves preses saltant-hi al damunt, d'aquí que se les denomini aranyes saltadores. L'exemplar del vídeo pertany a l'espècie Menemerus semilimbatus.

The little cobweb spider molted! This is her second molt in my care (she first molted right after I put her in a container).

She's only a few millimetres long. I think she's a _Parasteatoda_, which can get to about the size of a pea.

#DailySpiderPic #SpidersOfMastodon #spiders • #Araneae #Theridiidae

It's that time of the week again: time to feed the spiders. I think the cellar spider (_Pholcus_) in the jar won't need food for a while—I've never seen one so fat! I also managed to get three fruit flies into the orbweaver's (_Larinioides_') web with tweezers.

#DailySpiderPic #SpidersOfMastodon #spiders • #Araneae #Araneidae #Pholcidae

The cellar spider (_Pholcus_) under the radiator in my bedroom, enjoying a hand-delivered flightless fruit fly (with a second course wrapped up nearby). Note the distinctive eye arrangement: ( ∵ .. ∵ )

I'm simply amazed by how well these spiders can survive in very dry environments with extremely little food!

#SpiderSunday #DailySpiderPic #SpidersOfMastodon #spiders • #Araneae #Pholcidae

A large crop of fruit flies (_Drosophila hydei_) hatched today. Coincidentally I noticed a tiny orbweaver, barely more than a spiderling, had made a web on the inside of my window, so I carefully used a paintbrush to hold a fruit fly in the web, which it promptly took.

I had also found a smallish cellar spider under the shelves I use as a nightstand, so I moved it into the large jar I had used for the black widow, and, after giving it some time to acclimate, put in several fruit flies. It has already caught and wrapped up three. (Cellar spiders are well known to be impressive hunters.)

Neither are large enough to eat more than a few fruit flies a week, so if I want to make a dent in the flies I must search the apartment for more spiders…

#DailySpiderPic #SpidersOfMastodon #spiders • #Araneae #Araneidae #Pholcidae

Ooh. Some cool new research on slingshot spiders (_Theridiosoma gemmosum_).

"Saad Bahmla (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA) and colleagues, including Todd Blackledge (University of Akron, USA), discovered in 2021 that they could trick the wily arachnids into releasing their ballistic nets by simply clicking their fingers. Might the weapon-wielding spiders be listening to deploy their webs even before their victims have blundered into them? Sarah Han, also from the University of Akron, and Blackledge decided to test the spiders’ reactions […]

"Sure enough, the spiders let loose their webs when the flapping mosquitoes were in the vicinity. But when Han took a closer look at the movies they had recorded, it was evident that the insects never touched the webs with their protruding front legs. The spiders were capable of launching the structures even before an insect impacted the web. And when Han tried the same trick, but this time waving a tuning fork, pitched at the tone produced by the flies’ whining wings, in front of the web, the arachnids still released their webs to rocket forward. The spiders must have been listening for the approaching insects, letting loose their webs when the mosquitoes were in range, before the insect had blundered into it."

Article (like normal people newspaper style article, not a scholarly article): https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/227/23/jeb249732/363194
Paper: https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/227/23/jeb249237/363202

#Arachnews #OpenAccess #arachnids #spiders #SpiderBehaviour • #Araneae #Theridiosomatidae

Spidey Webberly ~~ a cute Halloween spider to start your day. Happy Halloween!!

Available here: https://1-lisas-baker.pixels.com/featured/spidey-webberly-lisa-s-baker.html