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Narrogin Jumping spiders

29/3/2022

 
Greetings fellow Foxies
Jumping spiders (family Salticidae) are miniature warriors of the spider world. They have the most species of the spider families and are very common, but are seldom noticed because they are so tiny. 
Jumping spiders are tiny day-active hunters that will tackle prey several times their size. They are the most intelligent and endearing of spiders, which will stand their ground and rear up when disturbed. Jumping spiders have outstanding eyesight.. The large, centre pair of eyes faces straight forward, giving the spider excellent resolution, and they have good color vision. 
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Jumping spiders make silk, but they don’t make trap webs, preferring to spot their prey from afar and leap on it (they can cover 50 times their body length in a single leap).  Since they are not tied to a single location by a web, they spend a lot of time on foot (they can remember visual landmarks and relocate their nests) or head-down, near the top of a plant, like a sailor in a crow’s nest. Whether they spot their prey from a perch or find it during a walk, they can spin a dragline when they jump. 
Narrogin species are generally tiny and drab, but make up for this with their interesting behaviour. Myrmarachne species are ant mimics/ant hunters. They tend to wave their front legs in the air to simulate antennae, and many have bodies that also closely resemble ants.

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​​Jumping spiders generally rest and produce their eggs in a small webbed sac in the leaf litter and under bark. In some species the male matures faster than the female and at maturity searches for a prepubescent female.  After finding one he builds her a shelter web and guards her other males until she is ready to mate.
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Very gravid (pregnant) female at edge of shelter web
Each autumn I see Euryattus species spindle shaped egg sacs on rock sheoak needles. The female apparently guards the egg web for a month until the spiderlings hatch, then dies. last year I watched a female patiently  sitting on or adjacent tto her egg. Unfortunately she disappeared after three weeks after heavy rain and I never saw any spiderlings.
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This video shows her waggling her cute little bum as she renovates her egg web

Two-tailed Spiders

19/2/2021

 
Picturecloseup showing eyes and twin spinnerets
Greetings fellow Foxies,
While photographing blobs of gum exuding from a manna wattle trunk, I saw an amazingly well-camouflaged little spider within 15cm of my eye. I initially thought that it was a small false wolf spider, but the two long spinnerets indicate a two-tailed spider (Family Hersiliidae genus Tamopsis).
These little spiders are quite common on tree trunks in Eastern Australia, but I have never seen one before, and find few records of them in WA.
Two-tailed Spiders are day and night ambush hunters. The spider waits for the prey on a rock or tree trunk. When there is a small insect within range, the spider will face backwards to the insect, then moving side-way like a crab, runs around and around it, enmeshing the insect with thick silk released from its long spinnerets.
When the silk tightens, the spider turns around, bites an opening through the silk and starts feeding.
Two-tailed spiders are absolute masters of disguise that can change colour and pattern to match their surroundings. Their egg sacs are tiny silken balls of eggs like the ones below.
Check out amazing images by Farhan Bokhari (Myrmician)

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Tamopsis with captured ant
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Possibly Tamopsis egg sacs

Lace-web Spiders

15/5/2017

 
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Greetings fellow Foxies,
We have a couple of common and really interesting lace web spiders in Narrogin. The name comes from the lacy nature of their very sticky webs.

The Black House Spider Badumna insignis that has a funnel-type web in every home and many cars (I have one in my external rear vision mirror), looks nasty but is really a wimp. They are very reclusive and are regularly eaten by birds and White-tailed Spiders.
The one on the left is about to feast on a donated cockroach, but only after I hid from it.

In contrast, the Social webbing Spider Phryganoporus candidus is inconspicuous, but builds an amazing communal web in summer to rear its young.
In late summer a young female establishes the web that is enlarged by her and her spiderlings that may number in the hundreds. The web contains a central living area of interconnecting tunnels that is surrounded by a communal catching web. It becomes a small city that contains the spiders, their parasites, and other beasties that feed on the debris. The dew-laden social web is an early stage.
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females have come together to start the communal web
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Mature web with spiderlings
In late spring, the sub-adult females leave the nest, and are followed later by the males. These spiders then establish solitary webs, and will eat any intruders, with the temporary exception of males for mating.
Until this autumn, I have wondered where these solitary webs were.
If you look closely on sheoak needles, you may see a miserable little web that ends in a thin conical retreat of silk and insect bits.
It took me a long time to coax one out with tasty flies and moths. They are small (about 5mm) lovely spiders that are covered with white hairs to help them cope with hot dry weather.
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fly drawn up unto the single spider retreat for supper
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adult female

Bird dropping Spider

25/2/2017

 
On the Banksia Trail I recently noticed a group of weird egg sacs on a twig with a line of silk that led to a strange lump. Unfortunately the bit with the lump broke off during examination. As the lump remains solid despite the process I suspected that it was a zombie spider,which had been killed by a fungus and took it home for examination. 
It was in fact, a very live but atypical  Bird–dropping Spider Celaenia dubia.
This spider is a master of disguise, which hides all day and hunts at night without a web.
At night it suspends itself on a web strand with its claws outstretched and emits a female moth pheromone. Male moths drawn to the scent are grabbed and consumed. Here is a female spider guarding her egg sac 
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Female guarding her eggs
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Brown ball-like egg
As each egg sac contains up to 200 eggs there were over 1000 potential spiderlings.
Check out the bent legs that enable the spider to keep them tightly against its body and the beak-like projection on the front of its carapace (top of front half) containing the slightly raised central four eyes (typical of the Orb weaver family in which it belongs) that enables it to see out when hunched up. They are no danger to humans.
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Long front legs for grabbing moths
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Lumpy mottled abdomen
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Legs adapted for folding up camouflage
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    Doug Sawkins is a friend of Foxes Lair 

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