{"id":26723,"date":"2020-08-10T21:13:04","date_gmt":"2020-08-11T01:13:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=26723"},"modified":"2020-08-10T21:13:04","modified_gmt":"2020-08-11T01:13:04","slug":"motherhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2020\/08\/motherhood\/","title":{"rendered":"Motherhood"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, there is a mother and babies involved, but in exactly what way, I cannot determine – no matter which, it’s definitely creepy to our human perspective.<\/p>\n

Out the other night by the neighborhood pond with a headlamp, tracking down a calling frog, I found a black shape on the trunk of a tree that, on close inspection, turned out to be a very large spider.<\/p>\n

\"six-spotted
It wasn’t until careful examination of the abdominal markings that I determined that this was a six-spotted fishing spider (Dolomedes triton<\/em>,) since I’ve never seen one this dark – usually, they’re olive green<\/a> to rust brown<\/a> in color. And this wasn’t the biggest that I’ve seen either, though it was still impressive, probably about 30mm in body length. I didn’t have to look all that close to determine that it was working on a meal;<\/strong> details were lacking due to the advanced nature of the consumption, but it looked to be another fishing spider.<\/p>\n

\"six-spotted
I did several angles, during which the spider twitched slightly but remained otherwise motionless, and I then pursued other subjects. Returning home and unloading the images revealed a few tiny details that prompted me to go back out and and do some more photos;<\/strong> right now, we’ll refer back to the first image and the details that I saw then, shown now in an inset.<\/p>\n

\"inset
To the lower right, at the base of the spider’s cephalothorax, can be seen another tiny spider, undoubtedly a newborn, while to the left, two more can be seen on the trunk (above and below the middle leg.)<\/p>\n

Now, I know females of the wolf spider family will carry their newborns on their back<\/a>, both as protection and to introduce them to captured meals;<\/strong> the mother will open up the exoskeleton of the prey to allow the young access to the juicy bits. I was not aware that fishing spiders did this, certainly never having seen any despite finding lots of fishing spiders, including a nursery of newborns<\/a>. But I’m not an entomologist, or any kind of collije edumacated, so it’s possible that I was simply unaware of more species doing this. When I went back out, I was hoping to find evidence of the newborns actually feeding on the captured prey, trusting the flash unit to reveal more in the shadows than I could see myself while there. Nothing was forthcoming, but I did get some slightly better pics of the little one on her back.<\/p>\n

\"six-spotted
The bebby also seemed aware of me as I leaned in close, and moved away from a direct line of sight. But now, as I provide another photo, I also provide a thought that occurred to me as I was looking at them.<\/p>\n

\"six-spotted
It remains possible that the fishing spiders do not<\/em> carry their young around nor lead them to meals, and<\/em> that I misidentified the prey. You see, that’s an awful swollen abdomen for a mother fishing spider, more like one that’s about to lay eggs, so it doesn’t see to fit with a proud mother. The only details that I can see for sure on the prey are the legs, and wolf spider legs can look similar. So it’s possible that what we’re seeing here are the newborns that had<\/em> been on a wolf spider’s back, until it fell prey to the fishing spider. Most dispersed, a few were hiding out on the trunk, and this little bebby got confused. I’ll let you think about that one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, there is a mother and babies involved, but in exactly what way, I cannot determine – no matter which, it’s definitely creepy to our human perspective. Out the other night by the neighborhood pond with a headlamp, tracking down a calling frog, I found a black shape on the trunk of a tree that, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[657,3808,5611,658],"class_list":["post-26723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","tag-dolomedes-triton","tag-newborn","tag-not-the-mamma","tag-six-spotted-fishing-spider"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26723\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}