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#arachnids

5 posts5 participants0 posts today

NZ's porous borders have allowed a little invader to take hold. The noble false widow spider is described as "one of the world’s most invasive".

“Although considered less dangerous than black widows, the venom of Steatoda nobilis contains similar toxins."

So far there have been confirmed sightings in Porirua, Christchurch, Nelson, Northland and Waikato.

stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360742048/

www.stuff.co.nzStuff
Continued thread

OK, sequel to my post almost exactly 1 year ago about milkweed pollinia…I discovered something amazing!

I was looking at some milkweed plants that had just started flowering and noticed a honeybee trying to get its leg unstuck from a flower. Because it's Peak Anystid, there were also many whirligig mites running around on the flowering umbels. These mites almost never stay still, yet one *was*. Could it also be stuck? YES! It was struggling to get out.

I looked carefully at more of the flowers and found a dead whirligig mite, also with its leg stuck in a flower.

I wonder how many other arthropods accidentally fall prey to the flowers?!

The sidewalk mites (_Balaustium_) that swarm over the ground this time of year primarily eat pollen, but they will also scavenge dead bugs (I do not think they are actually predatory). This horde has found an ant pupa, I think?

I am fascinated by this behaviour and try to catch it at least once every summer.

I was just poking around the garden today in a spare moment and had two unexpected arachnid discoveries!!

1. A hackled orbweaver (_Uloborus glomosus_), one of the very few venomless spiders, that also makes orb webs with a fuzzy, glueless silk not often used for aerial webs—I rarely come across them and never, I think, in my own garden.

2. A new kind of pseudoscorpion—not the tiny yellowish cthoniids I'm used to, but a HUGE beast with sturdy claws, like 3mm long! I think it's family Chernetidae.