arachon's Favourites

coll. JL13652
Newly described from hothouses in Denmark:
https://doi.org/10.13156/arac.2023.19.6.888

There are a few additonal photos taken by Jørgen Lissner at https://arter.dk/taxa/taxon/details/d0dadc2a-6833-4998-8f9b-b0ba00a4ece4

Communalweb spider job assignations

A few days ago the thriving community set up a massive, loose-mesh net across half the path. At any one time there can be 30-40 spiders of various sizes busy on different tasks around the place. They often resemble sailors busy with rigging repairs.
Yesterday I took a friend for a walk and as we turned the corner we flushed a large fly which blundered into the very top of the web and was unable to free itself. Immediately the 6 or 8 group members assigned to the instant response team shot out of the nest and scampered up the web. The swiftest pair both grabbed a leg each while they waited for the others to arrive and overwhelm the fly.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the community, spiders could be seen calmly going about their allotted tasks (pumping out silk for web repairs or tidying and nest-cleaning)completely unmoved by the struggle happening above.

A scrappy expanse of silky refuges and capture webs littered with body parts of previous victims. When preferred prey is entangled, the female spiders emerge from their 'nests' and overpower it by grabbing its extremities. In this case, a wasp https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/9319446.
Presumably they inject venom because after a minute or so the prey stops struggling. Then they snip it out of the web and carry it into one of several 'nests' or refuges.
Unwanted prey, often beetles (see https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/9319435 ) are also killed but sometimes left in the web, uneaten. Ants, in this case, Maranoplus ( https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/9319390 )scavenge around the periphery of the webs, feasting on unwanted beetles or other left-overs.