So once again we fudge things a little, because this has only appeared here once identified (by Genus only) – yet a few years previously, I’d come across a recent hatching of spiders that I couldn’t pin down until after I posted about them – by the time someone at BugGuide.net provided the info, the newborns had dispersed. Both are trapdoor spiders, Genus Ummidia, and I would love to get more detail photos of them, specifically with their namesake trapdoor lairs.
If you’re not familiar with trapdoor spiders, they have an interesting way of hunting, Instead of wandering and ambush hunting like wolf and fishing spiders, or making a suspended web to capture flying insects like damn near all the rest, trapdoor spiders make a burrow, only they create a false lid for it out of debris held together with webbing, so the opening is perfectly camouflaged, while they also run web strands out of it across the ground by the entrance. They then lurk under the cover until something disturbs the strands, whereupon they pop out and seize their prey, often grasshoppers, crickets, and other such wandering insects. Which means they spend most of their time hidden under a little round hatch perhaps up to 20mm across, someplace on the forest floor, so finding their burrow can be next to impossible.
They also have a distinctive body shape, and while I’d only seen photos and video of them before, when I found this one wandering across the path, it immediately rang a bell, so I captured it within a film can, and once back home confirmed that it was indeed a trapdoor spider – take a close look at the body, chelicerae, and leg shapes if you’re inclined to try and spot one for yourself. While we’re here, also take a look at how the eyes are all clustered together on that little hump right in the front center of the cephalothorax.
This one was undeniably annoyed at my probing to get it to pose, and bit my stick with those chelicerae twice – this pose is exactly as menacing as it looks. They’re not terribly big, but certainly give the impression of being bigger just from looking badass.
And if I really want to capture behavior, I’m either going to have to do a meticulous search for the burrows and stake one out for dog knows how long, or capture one and convince it to make a burrow in a terrarium somehow – neither one seems easy. This specimen, if I remember right, I simply released out back and hoped to see again, which did not happen. Nor had I seen any sign of the entire brood from three years previously once they’d left the holly bush, so my work is cut out for me.