Tarantulas in Visalia/Sequoia area??

elportoed · Tarantulas in Visalia/Sequoia area??

I was casually talking to one of my coworkers at lunch. The subject came to hobbies, so I told him that I just started collecting tarantulas. And I told him that there are quite a few natives in CA.

Then he told me that one year he and his wife drove up to Visalia/Sequoia area. He saw 'a few' tarantulas crossing one of the rural roads in the area. When I asked what's 'a few'. He said they kinda sprinkled the landscape, may be 20 or 30. And this happened in daylight hours.

To my understanding, the ones that wander around would be mature males. Do they come out during the day? Is this possible? Or is he just putting me on?

cacoseraph

from what i have read there are times when decent numbers do come out during the day

josh_r

our native tarantulas, aphonopelma, usually mate in the late summer/early fall. the mature males do wander during daylight as well as the night. more often than not, you will see very large numbers of them moving at one time. i see this every year here in arizona and it happens just as well in california. i have seen this on Mt. Diablo in walnut creek california. there is a species of tarantula in that area. i have found them before. it is an undescribed species and very cool looking. calisoga are also found in that area Smile

-josh

WBurke17

The male Aphnopelma that I caught in San Diego was out and wondering in the late afternoon hours.....W

elportoed

Are they mostly mature males looking to mate? Or males tend to wander around in general. Is it a good thing to collect when you see a few of them like that? I supposed if they are all mature males, won't be any point to collect them, so they can do what they set out to do.

cacoseraph

males and females are virtually indestinguishable in behavior until *maybe* one molt before maturity for the male... but usually he will still live in a burrow like a female would

on molt they go wandering. this is true for most mygalomorphs (trapdoors, funnel webs, tarantulas, foldingdoors, pursewebs, etc) and decently true for most araneomorphs ("normal" spides like grass spiders, widows, recluses, etc).

more araneomorphs seem to be wanderers with no permanent burrows/homes though, compared with mygs

WBurke17

I only collected the male because earlier in the year a group of us went down there and collected some females.. It was for breeding project....W

Johnny

When we were up north I asked a field worker walking into the little market/slash/diner/slash/video rental/slash/post office about info on tarantulas and he said the same thing, that they are all over the place and that we had just missed it by a couple of months. That would be around January or February which I thought was unusual. .....Guys, remember that? And I believe that it was Andrew that said that they have some type of Tarantula festival or something like that. I wonder if they are linked. Worth looking it up is what I say.

Johnny

Here's some info

http://www.azcentral.com/ent/pop/articles/1113tarantulafest13.html

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/coarsegold+ca/

Celeste

cacoseraph

collected males would be good for brent's ID work, i think. not sure if he is still in specimen reception mode though

elportoed

josh_r

brent is still accepting spiders. i just talked to him on the phone yesterday. he also gave me some very cool info Wink