Over the Garden Fence 
by MARY LEE MINOR

                           March, 2011

Spiders

 

            We are forever finding spiders in our homes, in our flower beds,  and everywhere in nature's stretches of water and fields.  Some are

 

cute, tiny and furry.  Others are gangly and fragile.  The webs which many species construct are miniature marvels of skill and technology.

 

In attending the March 9, 2011, Wildlife Diversity Conference at the Aladdin Shriners' Complex with over 900 others, I was given the newest

 

field guide,  Common Spiders of Ohio.

 

        This guide comes with information which clarifies what is and is not a spider.  It summaries life  cycles, covers venom and bites from

 

spiders, and outlines distribution.  Conservation of spiders merited space. Two whole pages cover webs and silk-making abilities.   And,

 

after reading through the material you just know that some individuals have spent considerable time spider snooping.

 

        Praise God for curiosity.

 

         The Ohio Division of Wildlife--Wildlife Diversity and Endangered Species Program summary sheet lists 39

 

families of spiders in Ohio.  That amounts to 630 species---to date.  The 'to date' part is what can scare you.  It infers that there are still people

 

out there tracking arachnids. 

 

        All spiders possess the ability to spin silk.  Silk can be sticky or not, even in the same web.  The strength and stretchiness allow a spider

 

to stop , catch and hold insects  with much more mass than itself.  Webbing ranges from architectural beauty to tangled tragedies.

 

Messy at a glance, the web is serving a purpose.  The cobweb weaver family builds with a plan.  The main mess, has a strand which falls to

 

a lesser and has by design a structural weakness. Prey bump the fiber,  struggle on the tension-filled line and drop away.  The spider

 

scurries to the catch, wraps it to further immobilize it, then injects with a bite. Feeding commences.

 

        Get this, our orb spiders pretty much build a web each day. The orbweavers that replace the spiral daily do so because the stickiness

 

dries out or fades in strength.  Damages include the fact that pollen and dust clog up the intricacy.  And spiders snack on the old silk.  This

 

behavior recycles silk proteins into new silk.

 

1.         An added fact refers to the nest-building work of hummingbirds and  gnatcatchers both scavenge web remnants to construct nests.

 

Amazingly, the silky, resilient nature of so many elastic threads can accommodate eggs, and a female, and subsequent growth of the young.

 

        This may be a little more that you wanted to know, yet there are pages filled with excellent photographs of spiders, their Latin names,

 

and a key to help us recognize web types and habitats.

 

         If you are slap-happy when it comes to spiders, the work of naturalists may turn you

 

into an appreciative person. With much more to share from the Wildlife Diversity Conference,  I wish to say that this new guide was like Christmas in March.