Supplement to Harvesting Ants and Trap-Door SpidersMoggridge, John Traherne
Science
Supplement to Harvesting Ants and Trap-Door Spiders
Moggridge, John Traherne
Ants; Trap-door spiders
I have found the remains of ants, of beetles of many species
and different sizes, of wood-lice (_Oniscus_), and of earwigs
(_Forficula_) in the nests of _N. Eleanora_ and _N. Manderstjernæ_,
and the wings of a large green field-bug in the nest of the former.
I have only once detected traces of food in the dwellings of
_Cteniza Moggridgii_, and these consisted of minute fragments of the
integuments of insects, none of which were certainly recognisable,
though I believe that they partly consisted of the coats of a small
species of ant. The rarity or complete absence of the wings of
insects which habitually fly rather than crawl on the ground, and
my inability to discover either snares or any evidence that these
spiders ever leave the nest, lead me to believe that they live (at
any rate from October to May) by dragging into their nests any
insects which approach within reach.
Ants, earwigs, beetles, and wood-lice are precisely the very
creatures which would fall a prey to the spider without obliging her
to leave her nest, and it is accordingly their remains that we find.
On one occasion, however, at Montpellier, my sister detected _N.
cæmentaria_ in the act of devouring a fair-sized caterpillar, to
obtain which there is some reason to think she must have left her
nest. We were out together on the 8th of May last (1874), hunting for
the new wafer nests of that district, under the kind guidance of M.
Lichtenstein, when my sister called our attention to a caterpillar,
the body of which partly projected from the tube of a cork nest (_N.
cæmentaria_), and prevented the lid from closing.
On closer examination we found that the spider was in the act of
devouring the caterpillar, and had already sucked out the juices from
the anterior portion, while the middle and posterior parts of the
body still resisted, and the legs clung tenaciously to the lip of the
nest.
M. Lichtenstein told us that this larva, which when entire must have
been rather more than an inch long, was that of the mullein moth
(_Cucullia verbasci_).
It was not full grown, and as there were no mullein plants within
some two feet of the nest and this caterpillar will not leave the
plant on which it feeds unless compelled, it would seem as if the
spider must have gone afield in order to capture it. It is possible,
nevertheless, that the caterpillar may have fallen within reach of
the spider when blown off the mullein leaves by the wind.
I have, unfortunately, but few details to give of the nocturnal
habits of the trap-door spiders. It would appear, however, that they
are more active by night than by day, and that it is more common
to find their doors ajar at night, with the spiders posted on the
look-out at the narrow opening. This is borne out by my observations
on captive spiders, to which I shall allude shortly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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