8 legged freaks: Spiders

Plenty of great spider action around at the moment. Heavy dew in the morning makes finding their webs rather easy. Not such great news for the spiders as prey can also see them. Once the sun is on the webs is does not take long for the droplets to evaporate. This is a good time to see the spiders as well. They are cold blooded and not that active in the morning so a close approach is much easier. Will be looking at two species of spider today.

The Hammock spider (Neriene clathrata):

This tiny spider is very, very common. Most of us have seen its webs drapped horizontally over the grass, reflecting the early morning sunlight. The webs vary in size from postage stamp up to nearly a foot accross. The picture shown below is a reasonably large one.

Hammock Spider  Web (Neriene clathrata)

Though these webs are considered more primitive than the orb webs they have a beauty all of their own. From the side the structure is much more apparent. A more or less horizontal sheet web is suspended on hundreds of silken fibres attached to the surrounding vegitation. It is like an ornate tent with lots of guy lines. The spider sits underneath the sheet, unimpeded by all the support structure above the web. The web works from above. Insects get caught up in intricate lattice of silk and eventually fall onto the sheet. The spider then bites through its own web and wraps the poor prey before sucking it dry. The spider itself is rather beautiful, but you will need to get close to notice, it is only about 5mm accross. Finding them is hard work, the larger webs are usualy more productive.

Hammock Spider (Neriene clathrata) about 5mm

 The Garden Spider

Garden Spider building web

 
The Garden spider is an orb web spider, considered the height of sophistication within the spider world. Their webs are stunning and take a bit of building. The photograph shows a garden spider at work building its web. You can see silk being produced by the spinnerets at the rear end of the spider. I had a good idea that this spider would be building its web here today as my dog had run through its web earlier on!