veravilla's Journal

Alright, the post everyone was waiting for after I've been complaining about it for months - Brown Widow Palooza. For some reason, this December, with it's weird 80+ degrees in the day, 40/50's at night; has spawned a large number of very small brown widows around my house. Truthfully, some of them may be from October or November, since a few I had seen were mid-sized (one is pictured here), but there were at least 10 other very tiny L. geometricus' hanging around in the 20 minutes I spent poking around, along only one side of my house. What I also found interesting, was that a week prior, in a friend's yard in Rosemead, there was no shortage of large, full-grown brown widows, but I have had such trouble finding anything larger than midsize near mine.
Not sure what to make of the mini explosion of brown widows, especially since spiders are cold-blooded, I wouldn't expect them to pop up like this so suddenly when the nights are so cool.
Happy to report the feather-leg is at least content enough in it's spot to have constructed a beautiful zig-zag web.
There were other sightings, including a possible comb-foot, and an entelegyne spider? The latter seemed to be affected by the cold, as they were sluggish to run, but still irritated enough with my paparazzi to quickly burrow into a crevice.

Neat additions of some species to my recordings this time. Happy to report the finding of two tiny Feather Legged Spiders - super cute to watch them run along their web like normal, but then immediately stretch out into as thin and straight of a line as possible when still. Gorgeous up close as well.
Also found a small orbweaver in a very large and impressive web. Finally spotted a larger brown widow, and a mid-size one. Mostly, they are very small and difficult to photograph. Since they are invasive, I can't say I was terribly excited to see them again, but it was something I hadn't seen in a while.
Not as many funnel weaver sightings, although previously most funnel weaver sightings are during the daytime, so possibly a factor. And of course you can't have spider observations without a cellar spider.
Lots of tiny Steatoda on one day - hatch-lings maybe. There were a few more I couldn't catch in time to photograph (they were soooo small!).

Spiders in this collection of observations are from the same vicinity, and in this way should share similarities to the other journal posts. Temperatures during this time were still warm, and just eyeballing the number of different species compared to what's been recently found, feels like there may be a correlation to either temperature and/or season (just maybe).

The appearance of a woodlouse spider was a pleasant surprise at the time, but less so upon research revealing it may give a painful bite. Cellar spiders and funnel weavers were of course found, and I find it worth noting again, that brown widows were hard to come by. Mouse spiders and tiny comb-foots are usually found in the house around this time.
A large triangulate cobweb spider was found - worth noting that it is related to the comb-foots, even though its at least 5 times the size! Also neat thing to note - the Woodlouse only has 6 eyes instead of 8.

The Colonus hesperus encountered during this time was the one mentioned in a previous post - I've only ever found one, but reading that they can be predators to the brown widows, I wonder if maybe they have something to do with the low numbers of brown widows. I've tried to keep an eye out for them, but maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places. This one was found on top of the washing machine and was very interactive, almost curious, with my flashlight and phone.

For this observation journal, I wanted to concentrate specifically on the spiders I could find in and around my house, on one specific day. (Actual location is left to iNaturalist to randomly decide on purpose for the express reason of not allowing my exact address to be determined.)

I expected to find a surplus of brown widow spiders, as I had in the years before of living here. However, I ended up only finding two smallish specimens that were possibly juveniles. This was especially surprising, since in the years before, they were absolutely everywhere in the backyard, and absolutely huge. Instead I ended up finding an abundance of good sized funnel weavers - there were around 3 more funnel weavers seen that ran away before I could take pictures, bringing the total to 6. I researched the possible cause of the decrease in brown widows, thinking maybe the funnel weavers had something to do with it, and was surprised to learn Colonus spiders are a regular predator - I had photographed a very friendly one a few weeks earlier! I'm wondering if the addition of mulch has something to do with this - since we've started mulching the right side of the yard, we've seen an uptick in Colonus and funnel weavers. I found no direct correlation between brown widows and funnel weavers, though. Perhaps the brown widows and funnel weavers compete for the same nesting spots and food sources, and with the Colonus preying on the brown widows, the funnel weavers are able to move in and take over. Possibly worth noting that the brown widows photographed weren't near mulched ground.

Additionally, 3 cellar spiders were observed, although only two are pictured (they are horrible posers, always!), a house spider (as usual, they are everywhere...), and a nice treat of a gorgeous orbweaver! I usually see one or two a year, and this one was quite far from the house this time.

Jumping spiders and cellar spiders seem to be plentiful in the urban watersheds. No orb weavers or brown widows spotted, which I found odd, as brown widows seem to be everywhere. Spiders were mostly small or the larger species were light colored. Steelhead Park had an abundance of tiny Sassacus vitis. Marsh Park had many Longbodies or similiar species that were golden in color, and other very small dark spiders.

Back at Lower Arroyo, several large Spotted Orbweavers were found, and other low to the ground, dense webs were all around. The environment here was lush, swamp-ish, with plenty of slow moving water, vegetation on both sides of the river. Both LA River watersheds were islands of dense vegetation in the middle of concrete washes, with fast moving water. Maybe a correlation between this and spider type and size?