Pardosa lapidicina group's Journal

Last Wednesday was warm and humid, so that was the day to go spider hunting. I wasn't going to let Colorado Bend State Park being closed spoil my trip, and I found my first lapidicina group spiders along the road about a mile outside the park gate. Although there was no water or even a dry wash nearby, it looked like runoff probably crossed the road at that point and more importantly perhaps were the stones scattered over largely treeless grazing land. It turned out there was a pretty active colony there. All appeared to be mercurialis. I checked several more spots along the way home including a small creek near the intersection of TX 580 and CR 1457. On the narrow sand beach along the creek I found a single juvenile Arctosa littoralis. I moved on to a large expanse of exposed bedrock about 30' from the water which was littered with loose stones. It turned out there was a pretty active colony of Pardosa mercurialis there as well. In both places I had to do a lot of stone turning before finding at least one of each sex.

I had hoped to find some vadosa in the area which was downstream from those I found near Menard. The San Saba River had high vertical sides going through town. It's possible that would block any downstream migration of vadosa.

Eric

I've suspected a hole on the combined lapidicina-mercurialis range, so I took a virtual trip on iNat up the Texas coast, around to the Louisiana coast, and up the east side of the Mississippi River. The latter two sections are not well represented on iNaturalist, and the area west of the Mississippi is likely devoid of the lapidicina group for lack of habitat. Nevertheless, there wasn't a single lapidicina group spider to be found south of Memphis. So, there appear to be shore dwellers from Florida into Alabama, and upland dwellers in widely scattered locations from Texas through to Alabama. Since there are few uplands in Louisiana and Mississippi, and no shore dwellers west of the Mississippi there does appear to be a large area where there are no lapidicina group spiders. Vicksburg has a small amount of likely habitat that would be worth checking out, but unfortunately none of it is accessible.