Tag Archives: spiders

Webs at morning

Creek at morning

Not to belabor the point every October, but there’s a lot to be said about autumn weather in Texas. Compared to last year, this autumn has been mild, humid, and wet. Creeks are up, ponds are full, and even the local reservoirs contain something other than mud and fish bones. The creeks, in particular, look like old times. Fish, turtles, even a blue heron or two: there’s still a long way to go before we recoup the damage caused by the ongoing drought, but nobody’s explaining.

Spiderweb at creek

The best sign of autumn? The warm weather and rain means bugs. “Bugs” usually means “mosquitoes”. Lots of mosquitoes means “lots of spiders”, and lots of spiders means “orbweaver webs in the morning sunlight on he way to the Day Job.” It all works out.

Better Than Brawndo

Now, I’m sharing a rather intriguing paper in the Annals of Botany on digestive mutualism between several species of bromeliad and the bromeliad-living spider Psecas chapoda for several reasons. It’s not just because P. chapoda is just one of several species of spider adapted to living within bromeliads, with their feces and food scraps contributing toward the bromeliad’s nitrogen needs. It’s not just because further investigation may help develop new insights into why carnivory developed in so many flowering plants, as well as how the carnivorous bromeliad genera Brocchinia and Catopsis got their starts. It’s not just that this sort of digestive mutualism exists in many protocarnivorous and carnivorous-by-proxy plants, such as the South African genus Roridula. It’s not even because with enough true carnivorous plants that take advantage of assistance from animal predigestion of prey, such as frogs in Sarracenia, Nepenthes, and Heliamphora pitcher plants, this discovery may suggest that other plants are only protocarnivorous during the times of year when the spiders move in. On a personal note, it means I need to do more to encourage the indigenous jumping spiders in the area to move in among my Nepenthes and Catopsis.

No, the real reason I want to share is because in the course of a long and eventful life, I have a lot of very sick and sordid friends. In fact, I can see at least one of them making up a tiny outhouse for the pitcher of my Catopsis, or at least a little sign reading “Flush Twice: It’s A Long Way To The School Cafeteria”. I expect at least one to go electronic, and fit the Nepenthes racks with a motion sensor and a sound chip that chirps “DUDE! Light a match, will you?” I may be 45 going on 12, but my friends are even worse.