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Comments & ID Thoughts
Welcome to my new series! Spider Approaches to House Cleaning is composed of seven new comics. I'll be posting one a week until I've posted them all. Enjoy!
1 of 7
This comic features (you guessed it!) Clarice, my favorite Grass Spider. While observing her, I noticed that she kept all her trash (remains of prey items and her own shed exoskeletons) piled up right outside her retreat. Often, she would sit in the middle of the pile, which made for excellent camouflage.
Grass Spiders belong to Genus Agelenopsis of Family Agelenidae, the funnel-weavers.
Grass Spiders build wide, flat webs which taper to a funnel-shaped retreat. Above the webs are individual lines of silk known as trap lines, designed to knock flying or jumping insects down into the web. The webs are typically not sticky; they trap insects temporarily by entangling their feet. Given time, some insects may work themselves free and escape. For most, time is unavailable, as Grass Spiders are lightning-quick.
If you have ideas for more spider comics, feel free to share them with me.
- Submitted by:
- Submitted: Nov 9, 2020
- Photographed: Nov 9, 2020
- Spider: Unidentified
- Location: Moscow, Idaho, United States
- Spotted Indoors: Basement or Cellar
- Found in web?: Yes
- Attributes:
Cute!! I like visiting my Grass Spiders, they make some really cool architecture in different forms to create slippery slides. Trashline Orbweavers would be cool for a comic. Spiders that use dead bugs to make decoys that look like themselves sound so fake. I saw them in-person in South Carolina, just barely. The trick to seeing the real spider was to twitch the trapline to get it to move.
Btw, Itsy Bitsy once told me that this site started out with a gallery of submitted spider artwork and a relatively very tiny amount of species they could identify.
SpiderID.com will be 3 years old this month! The original site Spiders.us started 9 years ago with about forty!!! species profiles.
Yes, I saw one of those discussions! I really wish they could bring back the artwork and general discussion categories so I could be sure I’m not breaking any rules posting this stuff here. It’s a great community, and I can’t think of a better way to reach spider enthusiasts.
Itsy hasn’t deleted any forms of art on the site, that I know of. She isn’t opposed to it. I think it is a good idea since the fundamental goal of the site is too teach and share enthusiasm about spiders. I think I’ve pitched the idea of bringing back art and conversation. It wasn’t rejected, but we have no ability to change the format. The basic problem is that our Site Administrator, a volunteer, has been too busy to deal with the site from the programming side. He was one of the 4 original Moderators. Only Itsy did the… Read more »
Right. I tried to check with her when I posted my beaded spiders and first comic; she seemed open to the idea but didn’t have time to go into detail. I’d love to see some of her art sometime. Oh, interesting on the site history. I’ve picked up tidbits here and there. It sounds like what you really need is another volunteer (or employee) behind the scenes who can handle the technical stuff. I’m going into IT as a career. I’ll not publish details here, but if you want to email me from over at BugGuide.net, we can discuss the… Read more »
Thanks! I learned what I could from Itsy and reading open dialogue histories on some user accounts. The “about” section is helpful and I read the memorials to Amanda, this site’s founder, on Bugguide. A relative who is a systems programmer said this site is easy to hack. I won’t resort to that to finally get a search bar! We don’t have any funds that I know of, we aren’t a for profit or nonprofit. Just a copyrighted “framework.” I don’t know where our photos or other info is stored. Neither does Itsy. Kyle and our lawyer would know more.… Read more »
Uh-huh. Yes, I agree with (systems programmer relative), this site is likely highly vulnerable (although I haven’t personally probed it for vulnerabilities), especially if nobody is keeping up with the infrastructure beyond paying the monthly cloud bill. Have you tried emailing the admin, not through the site here, but through the domain registrant’s officially published contact information? I agree that you should be made a moderator like Itsy – you hold this site together more than any other member. I can definitely understand the frustration with social media. Maybe it would be better to start with the American Arachnological Society’s… Read more »
I love Trashline Orb-weavers! I already drew a comic about them, which I can move up the queue to post sooner on account of your interest. I’ll make it the week of November 22nd, since I have one more in this style to post before I switch to posting the new style. I had the wonderful good fortune to see a Trashline Orb-weaver in my yard about a month ago. The first time I spotted him, I said, “Oh, look! A Trashline Orb-weaver!” and with “look,” he dropped from his web and vanished. I can’t help but think that he… Read more »
This is one of the 2 only grass spiders I’ve seen inside a building. The photo often comes back to me in google searches. //:0
https://spiderid.com/picture/51661/ I had technical difficulties. This photo seems to have been linked and shared enough to be popular on google’s algorithms. You might have read my long discussions of other spiders taking advantage of Grass Spider webs. Most of my discussions are lengthy. The friends and relatives who truly care about me are the ones who actually read what I right. My sibling only communicates by emoji texts.
Yes, I remember one of those conversations! I’d love to see some articles on that phenomenon; for that matter, any studies of interactions that are not strict predator-prey relationships between different spider species. That reminds me, I need to work on my mini-articles to go with my comics as I post them. Don’t want to fall behind! I’ll be getting a new one posted soon, maybe even tomorrow, and then the week after that, that Trashline Orb-weaver for you. 🙂 That’s tough. I’m sorry. It’s hard when you’re just not seeing the effort coming through from people who are important… Read more »