| Archive for scabies.myfreeforum.org Southern California Arachnid, Bug, Invertebrate, Entomological Society |
| cacoseraph |
Notes from the Field: AraneomorphsSeeing this thread ( http://scabies.myfreeforum.org/about1025.html ) reminded me of something i saw the other day while at work. I was talking to someone at a picnic table outside and glanced down at what i thought was an argentine ant walking across the table. i habitually kill those little illegitimates so i got my Mighty Finger of God ready to shuffle it loose... when i noticed it was a SPIDER! what is more... it was a male with swollen palps! it could not have been even 2mm BL/3mm DLS!Also.... i believe i saw what happens when a ~medium tiger centipede (Scolopendra polymorpha) stumbles into the well established domain of a large Kukulcania! I was looking in a field by a baseball park on the way to my house from work (Frisbee park if you can get into Locale Color) and i flipped a piece of sheet metal that was about ~1.5 square feet and bent to form a low tent. A large Kukulcania sp (2"+DLS, 1"+BL) had made a well developed catchbed on both the "ventral" side of the sheet metal and the "dorsal" side of the wood the sheet metal was resting on. A medium (~3-3.5"BL, but still teenager thin) tiger must have wandered into the edge of the webbing and then got increasing caught as it thrashed around in all that lovely cribellate webbing to escape. I do believe two of the middle body segments where somewhat drained of fluid. One possible thing makes me think that the centipede might not have been spider prey is that it was not gift wrapped... at all. I have seen some spiders eat non-gift wrapped prey, especially when the prey is considerably larger than the spider.... and i'm not sure if all spiders usually enshroud prey items or not. At any rate, the little tableau i uncovered gave me some entertaining food for thought 
Please add other entertaining anecdotes about true spiders in the field
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