Thursday Invertebrate Blogging: Motel 8 Legs

Even though I'm away from home (Dallas) and suffering from severe hay fever (the mesquite is blooming), I couldn't break my streak of consecutive Thursday Invertebrate photos.

I figured if I wandered around the grounds of the lovely Candlewood Suites, I would eventually find an invertebrate or two. The motel itself is a real winner. All rooms have beds and they'll even change your towels more frequently than once a week if you request it.

All this for only $65 a night!

Anyhoo, the critters below are a furrow spider (Luctenea cornuta) and the ever-popular wolf spider (family Lycosidae).

When I say "below," I mean that the pictures are part of the continuation. You'll have to click on the link to see them. While it's nearly impossible to get good macro shots in the dark, by sheer luck I managed to get two very "up close and personal" pictures of these not so eensy weensy spiders. They rate at least an 8 on the ugh factor for arachnophobes.

Go on and look, I know you can't resist.

Here they are!

Comments

[Wayne]

Great wolf spider! We have some biggies here in Georgia too - rabid wolf spiders - they're very maternal, carrying their bittie babies around on their back. Weeding in the garden, I've been bitten by a wolf spider that I accidently grabbed - their jaws aren't strong enough to penetrate but it did give a discernible pinch!

[lobbygow]

You should be drinking wine instead of doing...

Always good advice.

I'm feeling a little better today, so maybe a glass of wine will have a salutary effect. I was worried yesterday that it might make me feel worse.

[dad]

You should be drinking wine instead of doing this study of the things that scare your mother.

[lobbygow]

Is there some kick-ass online field guide I need to know about?

Actually, no. I have zero faith in the accuracy of my species IDs, but I figured an accomplished arachnologist would eventually come around to set me straight.

However, here's my imperfect and wildly irresponsible process:

1) Narrow arthropod down to genus through on-line dichotmous keys. Some genera have wildly varying characters and little agreement on placement even among experts. If that's the case, I go for sub-family or family.

2) ALWAYS double check distribution of genus/species and frequency of occurence in the area I'm in. This is done with a google search like "Nuctenea cornuta Texas distribution." If the species or genus is rare in the area, I usually bump the ID up to sub-family.

3) Google image search genus/species. You would be AMAZED out how many detailed photographs are out there of even the most prosaic species of arthropod.

4) If a majority of the images from trusted sources (usually universities) match my picture in a "gestalt" sense, I then check what characters I can with the on-line keys. If the key and photo comparison match, I risk the species ID.

I really don't know beans about spiders. It would be neat to see how accurate this method is. I wonder if some sort of bot could be developed that actually did the ID based on image comparisons to highly credible identifications of other photos. Trusted users would rank the likelihood of a correst ID for each photo. The more concurrences the higher the score. If you uploaded your photo and filled out a brief questionnaire based on salient characters, the program would give you a likelihood score based on correspondence to other images. The more trusted images that were out there, the greater the accuracy of the score.

Hmmmmm.

[hellbent]

How are you doing species level IDs of live specimens on the road? Is there some kick-ass online field guide I need to know about?

[Jessamy]

I am so not looking. I really, really, really appreciate you putting in the jump.

Way out in the boonies in TN, a friend of mine found a wolf spider in a barn one day, and it was actually (gulp) swarming all over with its babies, which they apparently carry on their backs. He caught it in a jar and brought it around to gross people out. I kind of wanted to look at it, just to see what something so foul looked like, but I was forcibly prevented by a coalition of my male friends. They knew all about my arachnophobia, and didn't want to hear me scream. I think this falls into the same category, and will thus abstain.

[rachel]

Aiiiiiiiigh!!!! The wolf spider! Oh God! You mean you just saw one of those things wandering around???!!!!

Great pix, btw. They'll be featured in my nightmares for the next couple day's I'm sure...

[rachel]

Aiiiiiiiigh!!!! The wolf spider! Oh God! You mean you just saw one of those things wandering around???!!!!

Great pix, btw. They'll be featured in my nightmares for the next couple day's I'm sure...