Nature

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Expiscor (5 August 2013)

Welcome to August! I’m heading off for Arctic field work today, but will try to post updates and I will try to keep Expiscor posts coming, despite the remoteness of where I will be…. I’ll see how I manage…

Here are some discoveries from the past week, for your reading pleasure!

  • A spidery mystery – Adrian Thysse posted this on Facebook – what is attached or stuck to the spider’s legs?
A mystery....what is the arrow pointing to?

A mystery….what is the arrow pointing to?

  • Scorpionflies – too cool for words – good thing we have amazing photographers out there!
  • I like bees. My colleague and friend Elena Bennett likes bees, and she has some hives – here’s a photo to show just HOW MUCH she loves bees!
Bees!

Bees!

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A Devonian Platter

A Devonian Platter

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The Mottled Jumper: a new common name for a jumping spider

A couple of weeks ago I set up a poll so that you could help give a jumping spider a common name.  This was all made possible thanks to a series of fun twitter conversations which ultimately led to the list of potential common names for Sitticus fasciger.

Sitticus fasciger, photo by Thomas Shahan, reproduced here with permission.

Sitticus fasciger, photo by Thomas Shahan, reproduced here with permission.

Crowdsourcing a common name received a bit of press (e.g., CBC Homerun, the afternoon radio show in Montreal), and this led to discussions about the process of giving species a common name.  For the record, with about 20,000 described arthropods in Canada, fewer than 1700 have common names (you can refer to the Entomological Society of Canada’s list of common names). There’s a lot of work to do!  There is a committee within the Entomological Society of Canada, and anyone can submit a common name - there is even a fillable form!  However, the common name must make sense, and have some meaning that relates to the species biology, appearance, or life history. A group of experts will evaluate the proposal, and if accepted, a species can receive a common name.  So, after this project with Sitticus fasciger, my work is not done: I will now proceed to get the selected common name officially accepted, and will eventually submit it for approval to the Entomological Society of America, also.

OK, enough of this… what about the poll results?

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Sitticus fasciger: over a hundred people have spoken… and the common name selected is the Mottled Jumper. That name received over 45% of the vote. It is also my personal favourite – mottled refers to irregular arrangement of patches of colour, and is an accurate description of the spider.

In sum, THANKS everyone for taking part – it was a fun project, and hopefully there will be more to come in the future.

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At the union of science and art: A giant, robotic spider sculpture

Very amazing stories sometimes come my way, and this one must be shared.  Don Hardy (an artist, creator, and curious man!) approached me with a story and photographs of a 9 foot spider sculpture that he made. Don found me because of the spider bite story that came out a few weeks ago, and he and I immediately developed a rapport despite the fact that we live in different countries, and have different training (me, trained as a scientist; Don, trained as an artist). What do we share?  A love of spiders: a love of their elaborate and unique anatomy, the way they move, and the way they have such an important place in our society – whether it be via adoration, fascination or terror.

So, let’s get right to the good stuff.  Here’s what Don created.

The giant spider sculpture!

The giant spider sculpture!

I am simply amazed and astounded by this beautiful creation!

I asked Don to provide me a few detail about the story behind his piece of art. Here are some exerts from his story, and Don has kindly given me permission to post this story, and his photographs.

I wanted to build a model of a spider for many years. The existing models and toys that I have seen were not real enough for me to appreciate so I decided to build my own version of a spider model. I studied many varieties of spiders and decided to use a combination of huntsman and wolf spider for my project. The initial inspiration was a huntsman spider due to an interesting experience I had at a pawn shop a couple of years ago. I was in the market for an electric piano and found one at a local pawnshop here in the Atlanta area. It was a Kawai model 330 missing the legs so I got a deal on it for 200 dollars! I brought it home and noticed that it had outputs for external speakers so I didn’t need to use the internal speakers at all. I could hook it up to my larger amp and get a bigger sound. I decided to take the internal speakers out and use them for another project later on. As I was taking one of the speakers out a large Huntsman spider came out of the hole! You can imagine how alarmed I was! I admit I jumped a little bit but soon relaxed after I noticed it was dead and dried up. I put it up and started to take out the second speaker. Another large Huntsman fell out of the second speakers hole! An unlikely duet! I put it up and continued to set up the piano for my other amp. The piano worked just fine. It gave me two giant huntsman spiders to contemplate!

Don then proceeded to study, measure and use these spiders as a model for his spider sculpture. Here’s what happened next, in Don’s words:

I used approx. a 40:1 ratio which would make my sculpture about 9 feet across with its legs fully extended. I made probably 20 trips to the local home improvement store and spent about 2 months working in the basement measuring, sawing, gluing, carving and bolting together the various boards, etc. that would replicate a spiders legs, pedipalps, fangs, sternum, cephalothorax and abdomen. I made templates for the eyes, fangs and abdomen. This helped with symmetry, size relationships and outlines for cutting. I also added heavy duty springs for leg tension so it could be self supporting.

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I decided to go with a wolf spiders face which looked more interesting and fearsome to me. The wolfspiders eyes were much bigger and menacing than the huntsmans. And the anatomy was similar enough to switch over to a wolfspiders face without much difficulty. Once the basic structure was completed I started studying many images of huntsman and wolf spiders to paint a pattern on top. I probably used about 20 cans of spray paint before I was satisfied with the pattern. I used some artistic license but still stayed true to basic patterns. These spiders are masters of camouflage and the coloration and patterns blend in perfectly with grasses and terrain.

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Halloween was fast approaching and I was able to display it in my neighbors yard. Amazingly some of the smaller children were crying and running from it thinking it was real! At first I built it as a static sculpture without any plans for further development. As I started studying what I created I realized that there was plenty of room for adding wires, motors and cables to make the fangs move, the pedipalps swing up and down and the abdomen to swing back and forth. Back to the workshop to add additional lifeforce! After drilling and a few more trips to the home improvement store I had a spider that had fangs that moved, pedipalps that swung in and out and an abdomen that shook back and forth!

Don and his spider friend.

Don and his spider friend.

Now it must surely be finished?

It stayed this way for about a year and then I realized I could make the two front legs raise up and down if I installed an actuator and cables on the sternum. I even went a step further and added servos and switches to the actuator and everything else so I could operate all the moving parts with a wireless transmitter! I purchased a Futaba four channel transmitter and four servos. I attached the servos to the sternum carefully lining up the wires and rods. After much tweaking I got it working quite well. The dream had of building a giant mechanical spider was finally coming true!

Um, yes, this giant spider sculpture moves. IT MOVES!  Here’s a youtube video to show the sculpture in its full glory:

In summary, I sincerely thank Don for doing this incredible project, and also being keen to share it with the world. His work is a wonderful union of science and art.

To see some of Don’s other work, you can visit this site.

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Expiscor (22 July 2013)

Expiscor is back! Here are some discoveries from the past week. I hope you enjoy!

  • Over on unpopular science, a nice write-up on peacock spiders. Yeah, these little critters are just awesome.
  • I know you are ready for it… a spider photo! This one, an amazing photo of a trapdoor spider by Matt Bertone (thanks Matt, for permission to post here!)

trapdoor spider

  • And the tweet of the week goes to Lab & Field - commentary on being a post-doc and multitasking!

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  • In honour of the completion of this year’s tour de France, here are some amusing quotes from one of the more colourful riders, Jens Voigt. e.g., Having things organized is for small-minded people. Genius controls chaos
  • And to finish, I agree with Bug Girl: this is one of the nerdiest Entomology videos out there. Wow.

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Help give this jumping spider a common name

There’s a small brown/grey mottled jumping spider that is very common on the exterior walls of my house. It’s curious, cute, always on the move. A few years ago I identified the species as Sitticus fasciger, a jumping spider known from many parts of Asia, and since the 1950s, from North America. It is now found in Quebec, Ontario, most likely other parts of eastern Canada, Manitoba, and many parts of the USA, west to Missouri.  This species is synanthropic – meaning it lives in close association with humans. More specifically, it’s found most commonly on houses and buildings (at least in the Nearctic).

Sitticus fasciger, photo by Thomas Shahan, reproduced here with permission (see more of his work here!)

Sitticus fasciger, photo by Thomas Shahan, reproduced here with permission (see more of his work here!)

That photo by Thomas Shahan is really stunning, but I must admit that most individuals I have seen are more brown/grey, and less ‘vibrant’ that the photo above. Have a peek at this video of a female (taken at my house) for what I think is more typical coloration:

Little is known about the biology of this lovely little spider – some work by Matsumoto and Chikuni (1987), done in Japan, discusses its life history, and a few nice websites have videos and other summaries of diagnostic characteristics and summaries of its distribution.  (here, by the way, is the original description by Simon).  I’m not certain about the etymology of fasciger. In latin, it refers to a ‘bundle of sticks or rods‘, which is not that informative. As Morgan Jackson points out, in middle Irish it could mean ‘neckband‘ which might refer to some of the coloration on the cephalothorax or abdomen.

This species, however, is lacking a common name, and I seek your help in determining one!

Although there are a lot of opinions about using common names for insects/spiders, I am generally in support of this idea. I think a more general audience likes to use common names, and I think common names can provide a nice context and description that is often missed with a latin name.  The Zebra spider (Salticus scenicus), for example, is a well known cosmopolitan species, and that common names says something about how the spider looks to most people. Similarly, the Dock (or Wharf) spider is a nice common name for Dolomedes tenebrous since a wharf is a very common habitat!  I think it’s a pretty ambitious task to give all species a common name, but I do think more common species should be given a common name.

So, with that introduction, let’s pick a common name for Sitticus fasciger.  I asked for suggestions on twitter, and discussed this topic with a few people. I have set up a poll, below, with some of these suggestions. I’ll leave the poll open for a couple of weeks (until 25 July), and then share the results with you. I will then work to get this name formally accepted by both the Entomological Society of Canada and the Entomological Society of America.

–POLL CLOSED–

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Expiscor (8 July 2013)

It’s full on summer in my part of the world! Great to have heat, humidity and fireflies giving a nice show. Here’s Expiscor for this week… some discoveries fished out from the past week, from spiders and insects, to art and flying bikes. Hope you enjoy!

  • Just look at this lovely spider! (photo by Chthoniid, reproduced here, with permission)

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  • So you think mosquitoes are bad in your backyard…?? Check out this photo from the Arctic (my experience agrees with this, by the way!)
Mosquitoes in the Arctic (photo by J. Krause, promoted by Amanda Koltz)

Mosquitoes in the Arctic (photo by J. Krause, tweeted by Amanda Koltz, reproduced here with permission)

  • Gosh it was a fun week on twitter, including a hilarious conversation about Odd Science Equipment – weird things that scientists use to get the job done. Here’s the storify of the hashtag, and there are a couple of other related posts over at Dynamic Ecology (here, and here)
  • And the tweet of the week goes to…. Avi Goldberg.  I love coffee, too.

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  • Another home run for Malcolm Campbell.  Here’s a quote from his latest post: As children, we make use of our human home bases – like mobile harbours – from which we venture out to investigate new surroundings or circumstances. They are also the safe harbours to which we return for comfort, support and reinforcement when we feel unsure, challenged, or threatened by what we have found
  • In honour of the Tour de France (my favourite sporting event to watch, despite the past problems), a game changer: a flying bicycle (thanks Matthew Cobb for that one!)
  • Some promotion for my PhD student Dorothy Maguire – here’s a neat video from Ecosystem Services Montreal, about her work on forest fragments, herbivory and insects. And yes, tree-climbing too!

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The spider hunt: jumping spiders of Mont St Hilaire

Last week I finally managed to get out of the office and into the field. More specifically, to one of the most beautiful forests in the greater Montreal region – Mont St. Hilaire.  This UNESCO biosphere reserve has a fascinating geological history, amazing flora and fauna, and contains some lovely habitats not found in other parts of the St. Lawrence Lowlands, including some rocky outcrops of higher elevation (circa 300-400 m above sea level – not much by some standards, but certainly higher elevation than the rest of the St Lawrence lowlands).

Yifu (left) and Margo (right) atop Dieppe summit at Mont St. Hilaire. Excellent spider-hunters!

Yifu (left) and Margot (right) in the fog, atop Dieppe summit at Mont St. Hilaire. Excellent spider-hunters!

One of the objectives of the field trip was to kickstart a jumping spider survey of the region – jumping spiders are the darlings of the arthropod world – charming and charismatic critters, beautiful, and with stunning courtship behaviours. They attract attention to spiders (in a positive way), and one of my goals is to increase awareness about our eight-legged friends.

The trip started out in fog, and we felt as if we were in Middle-Earth for most of the morning. My two helpers, however, remained enthusiastic and optimistic. We had an early lunch, and the sun finally started burning off the clouds and fog, and the jumping spiders came out.

We were quite thrilled to see Euophrys monadnock hopping around the rocky outcrops. Males of this (tiny) species are vibrant, with their yellow pedipalps, yellow tarsi, and two red legs.

Euophrys monadnock, atop Mont St Hilaire

Euophrys monadnock, atop Mont St Hilaire. Photo by C. Buddle

As we were heading back into the forest, we also encountered an Ant that wasn’t quite right. Its movements were a bit off, and its body shape was not quite right. In fact, it was not an Ant, it was a jumping spider that mimics Ants. Stunning little creature!

A jumping spider, not an ant! (Photo by Yifu Wang)

A jumping spider (a female Peckhamia pictata), not an ant! (Photo by Yifu Wang)

In sum, a successful day – the sun came out, the jumping spiders were jumping, and we were reminded of how important it is to get out into the field every now and then.

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Labels tell stories: natural history and ecology from dead spiders in vials

Earlier this week I was back in Ottawa at Canada’s National Spider collection with a couple of enthusiastic students from the lab. We were doing more databasing, which involves reading old labels and entering the information into a database.

Sound boring?  Nothing is further from the truth. It’s an amazing way to spend time, here’s an example:

Spiders as prey

Yes, that label for a jumping spider species provides more than a name, locality and date. It provides a story. It confirms that spiders are hosts for parasitoid wasps, and it documents an ecological interaction; one that is stamped in time and place.

Every single specimen in a museum or research collection tells a story. There are untold riches on little pieces of paper linked to biological specimens. In addition to the usual name, place, and time, label data gives us varied and fascinating ecological stories. Here’s another one:

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Yes, more evidence of one spider species preying upon another species. Intraguild predation, recorded and placed in a vial.

I love this next one – in part because you now know that bluebirds eat jumping spiders and that Arachnologists can identify the species based only on the male palp (that is all that was in the vial, it’s the little spider ‘bit’ at the bottom left). Um, I suppose the bird got the rest of the specimen!:

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Label data can tell incredible stories!  Here’s a nice set of labels that show how Phidippus jumping spiders really, really get around:

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Planes, automobiles, and boats.  (um, boats in Saskatchewan! A Province of relatively limited water, by Canadian standards).

Label data also provide insights into the characters of scientists. Below is an example of three different individuals all identifying the specimen as the same species. The three scientists, by the way, are preeminent Arachnologists in North America – I would trust any one of their identifications, but clearly they were not entirely sure, and all three had a look to confirm the identification. Three votes from Dondale, Maddison & Edwards, in three different decades! Yes, it’s Phidippus audax:

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Label data provide an important historical context.  I was thrilled to see this label from 1917 collected by none other than Norman Criddle (Criddle is well known to Entomologists in Canada):

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Label data provide opportunity to discuss, imagine and be inspired by biodiversity. I identified a species of jumping spider from a place called Sable Island. The species is one of the most attractive spiders in North America, Habronattus decorus. 

Sable Island is here:

Sable Island

So… the questions start. How did it get there? Presumably ballooning? Are these lovely critters still on Sable Island? What is the fauna of Sable Island? Is is a stable fauna? An old vial, stuck in a cabinet in Ottawa, opens to door to questions of dispersal, biogeography and biodiversity.

I think the message is clear: databasing provides a rich opportunity to paint a picture of a species, over time and over space.  

But here’s the problem: there are about 2700 vials of jumping spiders to database. Each one takes about 3 minutes to database, meaning it would take about 135 hours of work to database only 1 family of spiders, in one collection! And working in the collection is not free – paying students, travel time, lodging, etc. all take time and resources.

So far our laboratory got through about 400 specimens (15% of the Salticidae). We have barely made a dent.

This is an undeniable problem: We must capture these data and make them available for scientists to use.

How can we understand biodiversity change when most of our historical data are not yet digitized?

How can we begin to understand biodiversity patterns without knowing what is where, and when? 

When I wrote my previous post about the Canadian collection, I was pointed to Notes from Nature - an on-line resource where databasing is crowdsourced. This is a pretty neat idea – label data (and specimens) are photographed, uploaded to the site, and anyone in the world can transcribe the data.  It allows anyone with an interest in biodiversity to reach into a collection and learn the stories from the specimens.

I am hoping to try this out with spiders from Canada’s national collection. While in Ottawa, I tried taking photos of specimens, and tracked how much time it takes. It turns out it takes about 2 minutes to photograph the specimens and label. You must take out the spider, the label(s), arrange everything carefully and take photo(s). It then takes about 1 minute to edit the photo, and about 1.5 minutes for someone to enter data into a computer from a photograph instead of from the specimen itself. So, total time for databasing is 1-2 minutes longer than sitting in the collection and doing the databasing. The benefit, of course, is that there is good potential to actually get a collection databased from afar. Here’s an example of a photographed label and specimen, after editing:

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Question: would YOU help database if you could go on-line and see these kinds of images? Does it grab your attention? Even if 20-30 people agreed to database 75 or so specimens, each, the Salticidae would be done! (and, of course, someone would have to take images, and edit them beforehand).

I am keen to have your feedback…. I want to know if it’s an idea worth pursuing.

Do you want to learn stories from specimens? 

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Expiscor (17 June 2013)

Here are some discoveries fished out from a week of travels on the Internet… spiders, biodiversity, and so much more. Enjoy!  (past editions of Expiscor can be found here)

  • Keep calm and kill them with fire. The comments on Reddit remind me that many people don’t like insects and spiders and will do a lot to kill them. (sigh).  Gotta love Bug Girl’s ”Incredibly Bad Ideas” (this week, featured a wildfire in Arizona started because kids tried to kill ants by burning them….)
  • Spidernauts. Had a nice chat this past week with Christina Russo about behaviour of jumping spiders in space. More specifically, we talked about Phidippus johnsoni – a species that went to space!   Do you think it’s just a coincident that that species was selected and that there’s a Johnson Space Center? Curious about how jumping spiders move in space? Have a look…

  • Speaking of stunning, Alex Wild took some incredible photographs of a white-eyed Drosophila mutant.
A photo by Alex Wild, reproduced here with permission. See more of his work here.

A photo by Alex Wild, reproduced here with permission. See more of his work here.

  • Get your buzz on.  Even CBC radio is in the mood to talk about Cicadas! (by the way, if you don’t listen to Tom Allen’s show in the afternoons… you should!)
  • How about Biodiversity & Beer. Species rarity, niches and so much more explained with beer. (thanks Carly for tweeting that video)

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Update: spiders STILL don’t bite

My post, titled ‘Spiders do not bite‘, remains the most frequently visited post on my blog, receiving hundreds of hits each week. It was written over a year ago, and has received quite a number of interesting comments.  Some people decide to comment without actually reading the post (!), and by in large, these comments come from people who just can’t be convinced that spiders rarely bite people. In other cases, people comment with a big “Thanks“, as the post has provided them some comfort (this is a key reason why I wrote the post). The title of that post was meant to be provocative, and to help swing the pendulum a bit, and be an antidote to the garbage out there on the Internet about spiders bites.  I remain emphatic: spider bites are exceedingly rare and other causal agents are much more likely.

Just recently, I was thrilled to see another paper published by Rick Vetter (a well respected Arachnologist who has worked on debunking myths about spiders). This recent paper is titled “Spider Envenomation in North America” and was published in the journal Critical Care Nursing Clinics of North America. The paper was aimed at Nurses and to a lesser extent, Doctors, and gives frank, clear and concise information about spiders and spider bites.

Here’s the opening sentence: “Spiders occupy an interesting position in human society and in medicine. The overall health risk that they pose is minor compared with other routine events such as driving an automobile, vocational and recreational hazards, or living an unhealthy lifestyle“

Bingo. Spider bites are exceedingly rare!

Here is some more detail and context: there are only two groups of spiders in North America which can truly be considered ‘medically important’ - some species within the ‘widow’ group (e.g. black widows) and some within the ‘recluse’ group (e.g. brown recluse).  Here’s a lovely photo of a brown recluse spider, courtesy of Matt Bertone (thanks, Matt, for permission to post the photo here!).

A beautiful brown recluse spider. Photo © Matt Bertone, reproduced here with permission.

A beautiful brown recluse spider. Photo © Matt Bertone, reproduced here with permission.

Much of Rick’s article documents the effects of bites from these two groups of spiders, and without a doubt, verified, real cases of spider bites from these two groups can certainly affect your health. Rick provides a clear list of symptoms and also discusses treatment options (including what used to be done, historically e.g., cocaine treatment for widow bites in the early 1900s).  He also points out that the actual number of recorded, verified bites by spiders are quite rare, even in regions where widows and recluse spiders live in proximity to humans (um, I have to state that because recluse spiders are continually blamed for bites in areas well beyond their range!).  Without doubt, poison control centres, Doctors, and other health care professionals hear panic about spider bites, and certainly see cases of lesions that are attributed (often by the affected person) to recluse spiders.

So, if it’s not spider bites, what is causing lesions?  Thankfully, Rick provides an answer, and I quote from the paper: “Possibly the most important advance in spider toxicology is the realization that many skin lesions that were attributed to spider bites were actually bacterial infections… Another study showed that of 182 southern Californian patients seeking treatment for spider bites, only 3.8% had actual spider bites while 85.7% had infections“.  So… more likely causal agents should be investigated.  Here’s a table from a 2003 publication by Vetter et al. that lists some of the potential causal agents that could be confused with brown recluse bites.

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In sum, I remain steadfast in the claim that spider bites are exceedingly rare. Furthermore, there are very few species that are medically important, and of the thousands of spider species that exist in North America, few warrant any concern or fear. Spiders are our friends. Arachnids deserve positive attention.

I’ll finish on a positive note: as I was preparing this blog post, I had some nice discussion with Rick about his crusade to reduce fear and anxiety about spider bites. He’s worked hard to publish articles in journals which are read by health care professionals, and he believes the strategy is working.  Here’s a quote from Rick:

I have seen significant change in the medical literature where they are quoting my papers a lot and telling colleagues to be cautious with their diagnoses.  There are still those out there that continue to misdiagnose but I think that they are now in the minority.

This is great news, and I am heartened. That being said, I think we must continue to provide clear and accurate information to a broad audience and to the news media. I believe general paranoia and hysteria about spider bites is still high despite a potential shift in diagnosis from the medical community.

References

UC (Riverside) Spider Site.

Vetter, R. (2013). Spider Envenomation in North America Critical Care Nursing Clinics of North America, 25 (2), 205-223 DOI: 10.1016/j.ccell.2013.02.006

Vetter RS, Cushing PE, Crawford RL, & Royce LA (2003). Diagnoses of brown recluse spider bites (loxoscelism) greatly outnumber actual verifications of the spider in four western American states. Toxicon : official journal of the International Society on Toxinology, 42 (4), 413-8 PMID: 14505942