Lycosidae: wolf spiders

There are 37 British species belonging to this family. Lycosids or wolf spiders are medium to large species that are usually found running on the ground, although are burrow dwellers and others live near water, and can dive for safety. They are highly visual spiders, and have a pair of large eyes and then two small pairs in a row underneath and two middle sized ones on the side of the head. Most species are active during the day, with a strong tendency to bask in sunny spots in the open, often in large numbers in some species. When resting they fold their front legs underneath their body, and leave the rear legs stretched. When disturbed they can quickly run, even jump, for cover. They can be remarkably camouflaged in their habitats.

Courtship
Wolf Spiders typically mature in the spring. Adult males spend much of their time finding and courting females. They might locate the female first using pheromones, but the courtship display uses mainly visual cues. Male palps or front lets tend to be dark and males will wave them up and down alternatively, vibrating the palps and abdomen in front of females, legs stretched as in tiptoes, approaching a little bit in between signals. Females may accept the male by tapping their front legs rapidly on the ground, however they often retreat, or lunge at the males to scare them off. This rarely deters the insistent male for long. Read this post in BugBlog for more on the courtship of these spiders.

Mature male Pardosa sp. on the look out for females

A male courting an egg carrying female

Egg sacs and spiderling piggy backs
Their wandering nature has resulting on wolf spiders unique way to carry their egg sacs and their young. Females wrap their eggs in lentil shaped egg sacs that they secure to their spinnerets and carry with them for a couple of weeks. The female opens the egg sac to allow the spiderlings to emerge. Once they do, they climb onto their mothers abdomen and are so carried for several days.

Pardosa, likely amentata, a common species in my garden.

This is the bluest eggs sac I've seen on a Pardosa female. Possibly freshly made?

Pardosa female with her spiderlings

A wolf spider gallery

This family, as many other spider families, contains many species that are difficult to identify in the field. If you see any obvious identification mistakes please let me know.

Arctosa perita, an amazingly camouflaged species on sandy beaches and dunes (also top shot). This one photographed at Spurn Point yesterday. This species makes a silk lined burrow where she spends much of her time (read this post from Catherine Scott's blog with fantastic photos of this species and the burrows they make).

Possibly Pardosa pullata, female with egg sac, on rocky mountainside

Female Pardosa possibly amentata with egg sac, basking in the garden.

Unidentified wolf spider with spiderlings on mossy, heathland area.

Trochosa sp. on pond margin.

A Pirata piraticus, pirate wolf spider, resting on the water surface. This spider can be found on ponds and they often run across the surface, where they hunt small invertebrates.

The striking male Pardosa lugubris/saltans

Female Pardosa lugubris/saltans with egg sac

A spider safari

Today for 30 days wild we did a spider safari. Any day is as good as the next for spiders if you ask me, but I am aware there are many people either fearful or wary of spiders. If you are in either of those categories, thank you for reading on, I hope that at the end of the post you look at them for the wonderful and diverse group they are and by understanding them better you might keep a certain level of respect for them, but enjoy them more. All the photos were taken today.
 My daughter found a large cluster of Garden Orb Spider Araneus diadematus spiderlings in between two pots (above). These spiderlings balls are now everywhere (even on my car!). Once they hatch from their silky cocoon, they will stay in a tight ball for a few days in a communal web. After they moult they will disperse to make their individual webs and start catching tiny insects, mostly aphids.
 There are two age groups of Araneus in the garden now. The tiny newborn spiderlings and the year old spiders which have survived the winter and are not mature. This large male has built its web in a flowering sage with is always busy with insects.

Male Araneus diadematus on his web.

A male Philodromus aureolus

 We also found this lovely spider crawling on a hedge, on our way back from school. Males of some crab spiders have iridescent scales on their bodies. I think this is Philodromus aureolus. After failing to take a photos where it was as it was quite mobile, I potted it to photograph at home. Shortly after I released him in the garden I found another individual on ivy, and what could possibly be the female of the same species (below). Crab spiders don't build webs, instead sitting on leaves or flowers to ambush flying insects that stop to bask or feed on the flowers.There are several common Philodromus species, and without microscopic examination of their genitals (or palps in the case of males) identification to species is not possible, which is sadly true for many species of spider.

A female Philodromus sp.

 I searched on some bare ground in the garden and didn't take long to find a wolf spider, a Pardosa, (probably amentata). Wolf spiders don't build webs either, but they move about searching for insects, although they also do quite a lot of basking on sunny spots on the ground. As they don't have a 'home' females carry their egg sacs with them attached to their abdomen, which you can see in the photo below. This photo also illustrates the maternal behaviour of spiders: many species build a cocoon for their eggs, which they attach to a dry corner, or carry the egg sacs with them, or the spiderlings (wolf spiders do this!) or even feed the spiderligs with eggs, regurgitated prey or especial eggs. The most extreme form of maternal behaviour is matriphagy, in which the mother allows the spiderlings to eat her, and eventually kill her.

Female wolf spider, Pardosa sp., with her egg sac.

 Another favourite place for spiders is the log pile. I removed a few logs and found a Blue Lace Spider, Amaurobius similis. A spider that forms a very characteristic form of carded silk and can be found on crevices on walls or trunks or on thick ivy. Amaurobius is one of the bunch of species in which females sacrifice themselves to their first batch of spiderlings, a matriphagous species.

Amaurobius similis. 

 And a few logs later a large female House Spider, Tegenaria sp. House spiders built sheet webs funnelling into corners, where they have a retreat. When potential prey lands on the sheet they come out and trap them. You can entice them to come out by spraying some water on the sheet web. If you see a large spider with long legs in the autumn running around on your living room carpet, or you find one in the bath in the morning they are likely to be a male Tegenaria. They have abandoned their retreats and go about searching for mature females to mate.

Female Tegenaria sp.

 Then it was time to go inside. I have a thriving Pholcus phalangiodes (known as Daddy Long Leg spiders) population in the house. They hang from corners in the ceiling, not moving much. This mature female, which lives under a shelf in the toilet, with her distended abdomen, looks ready to lay her eggs. She will wrap them loosely with silk and carry them in her mouth until they hatch. Then she will sit by her spiderlings for two weeks (presumably not eating anything during this time). Despite their spindly appearance, Pholcus are fearsome predators, capable of subduing much larger and stronger spiders by wrapping them in silk with their long legs.

Pholcus phalangioides, mature female.

Wildlife garden meadow unfurling

The meadow in the wildlife garden is growing fast, speckled with buttercups and with the wide geranium and cranesbills carpeting it. Today it was warmer than previous days, with sunny spells. In the morning, I checked for insects and spiders. Female wolf spiders, at least two species, basked with their egg sacs. I also spot several nursery web spiders, I try to get close without spooking them, slowly crouching down to their eye level. When they bask, they often cross their front legs in front of them (above), but if they sense danger, they spread them out or just dash down into the grass. I see several males, each of them with a distinctive colour pattern.

Rhopalus subrufus

The large narcissus fly, Merodon equestris, many around, my first of the year.

A Scatophaga sp. fly

A Lucilia sp. greenbottle

Mating 14 spot ladybirds.

An unfortunate 7-spot ladybird fell prey of the teasel.

Wolf spider with egg sac.

Amber snail, many on the rotting vegetation around the ponds edge.

Cheilosia sp. a hoverfly on a buttercup.

Mating Corizus hyoscyami

A very pale grey male.

The same male than the top shot.

No butterflies, today, just a few Mint moths, Pyrausta aurata, in the marjoram.

Wolf spiders walking on water

The other day in the wildlife garden, I noticed a wolf spider, Pardosa sp., running on the pond water. I had to look closely as I had never seen them doing this and I wondered if it was a Pirate Wolf spider instead, which also live in the pond and are normally associated to water. But alas, no, it was definitely a common wolf spider like those living in my garden. She confortably moved by the water's edge, often with its front legs resting on the water surface, happily floated on the water on their hydrophobic tiptoes and easily run away very fast on it when came close.
 There is a single species of British truly aquatic spider, which live most of their lives under water, Argyroneta aquatica, the Diving Bell Spider or Aquatic Spider. The two species of Raft spiders, Dolomedes sp., one an endangered species in the UK, are semi-aquatic, and live in marshy places and hunt on water, diving if they feel in danger. Wolf Pirate spiders, Pirata sp. as I mentioned earlier, also associated to water and their protective silk tube built on sphagnum mosses ends by the water surface. All these species are unusual in which they have hydrophobic body surfaces, with short hairs that repel water and in the case of the aquatic spider, form a thin coating of air when the spider dives. Gail Stratton and her colleagues studied the locomotion behaviour or 249 American spiders of a 42 families to understand their evolutionary basis. The researchers placed the different species on water surface and recorded their movements. Some spiders sunk immediately. Other spiders which were able to float sometimes used a specialised gait, called 'rowing' which consists on keeping the first and fourth pairs of legs immobile, and moving the middle two pairs simultaneously as propellers, in a similar way to a pond skater. Some spiders able to float would walk as they would do on land. Stratton and colleagues plotted their result on a phylogenetic tree to understand if hydrophobicity and rowing behaviour have evolved just once or more times. You would naturally think that aquatic spiders have evolved their hydrophobic nature in order to be able to live in, on or near water, but in reality, they belong to a small group of spider families in which most if not all species are naturally hydrophobic, and can run - or row - on water. Two of these families, which are closely related, Pisauridae - the family to which marsh spiders belong - and Lycosidae, the wolf spiders, include many species that, although not normally associated to wet habitats, have no trouble walking on water if they need to. Hydrophobicity seems like a prerequisite for regular association to water and later semiaquatic habits.
 I wanted to check this by myself with the wolf spider living in my garden, which is likely to be Pardosa amentata, and captured an individual to test it. I placed it on a lily pad in our bath pond and it had no hesitation on walking on water and no trouble running away. In fact, it was so fast that I was unable to take a video of it doing it!

Pardosa sp. hunting on the pond of the wildlife garden 

This one is my garden spider demonstrating how its legs rest comfortably on the water surface.

More information
STRATTON, G., SUTER, R., & MILLER, P. (2004). Evolution of water surface locomotion by spiders: a comparative approach Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 81 (1), 63-78 DOI: 10.1111/j.1095-8312.2004.00269.x

March already

March always takes me by surprise. I realised today that the end of winter is within sight, and it hasn't really felt like a proper winter, as it has been very mild, with a scattering of frosts, although very windy and overcast. With the sun out today, a dronefly Eristalis tenax stirred up and alternatively visited the Laurustinus on the shade and sunbathed in the wall opposite. A pack of young wolf spiders enjoyed the sun too. I wandered around and realised the garden is ready for my favouring early spring invertebrate, Anthophora plumipes, the hairy footed flower bee. Males should be appearing by the end of this week, weather permitting. I photographed their favourite flowers at bee-eye view. I hope they don't make me wait too long.

Pardosa sp wolf spider sunbathing

White dead-nettle

Rosemary

Muscari

Narcissus tete-a-tete

Lungwort

Primroses