Harvesting Ants and Trap-Door Spiders: Notes and Observations on Their Habits and DwellingsMoggridge, John Traherne
Science
Harvesting Ants and Trap-Door Spiders: Notes and Observations on Their Habits and Dwellings
Moggridge, John Traherne
Ants; Trap-door spiders
"It needs some practice, as the specimen before you shows, to enable
one to discover the nest, as the door is always closed by day. I dug
out several of these tubes, but failed to find either the remains of
food or excrement. So there was nothing for it but to devote a couple
of nights to watch these creatures. With this view I selected a place
where many spiders had excavated their tunnels, and availed myself of
a moonlight night for my observations.
"Shortly after nine o'clock the doors opened and the spiders came
out, fastened back the trap-doors by means of threads to neighbouring
blades of grass or little stones, then spun a snare about six inches
long by half an inch high, and afterwards returned quietly to their
holes.
"I had so chosen my position that I could see three of these spiders
at the same time. I now captured a specimen and put it into spirits,
and in a short time saw entangled in the net of one of the remaining
spiders a _Pimelia_, and of the other a _Cephalostenus_, both rather
hard-lived, night-flying beetles, which were seized by the spiders,
and the latter, after sucking out the juices, carried the empty
bodies to a distance of several feet from their holes. All these
events happened in about three hours, after which time I allowed the
two spiders to remain undisturbed, and returned to the house.
"Early next morning I revisited the spot, and then perceived that
these two spiders had entirely removed the net which they made the
preceding night, but the entrance to the nest of the spider which
I had captured still remained open, and I could clearly trace the
shape of its snare, on which the heavy morning's dew lay. The upper
threads were isolated, but the snare became thicker as it approached
the ground. I found that these snares had, strange to relate, been
gathered up by the two other spiders, fastened on to the door, and
smoothly spun over, and, on making a vertical section of the doors,
which were nearly a quarter of an inch thick, I discovered that they
were composed of several layers.
"In the nests of several females I found eggs at the bottom of the
tube, not placed in cocoons, but attached by separate threads. The
young spiders when hatched are turned out from the asylum of their
mother's nest; and I found these creatures when scarcely two lines
long already established in nests three inches deep, and furnished
with perfect trap-doors, of which facts the specimens I now lay
before you are the evidence."
C.
Species of Territelariæ, enumerated by Professor Ausserer,[99]
belonging to Europe and the Mediterranean region, with synonyms, and
two species which I have added in brackets:--
[Footnote 99: Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Arachniden-Familie der
Territelariæ, in k. k. zool.-bot. Gesellschaft in Wien (1871), vol.
xxi. pp. 117-224.]
_Atypus piceus_, Sulzer. (_A. Sulzeri_, Latr.) Holland, France,
Switzerland, Germany, Northern Italy.
_A. Blackwallii_, Auss. England.
_A. Anachoreta_, L. Koch. Fiume.
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