I'll be doing a little bug hunting in WV this wekend.

[Moltar]

Hey folks. I'm going camping in rural, mountaintop West Virginia this weekend. I plane to make a couple of pitfalls and just generally look around for stuff. A couple of years ago I saw what seemed to be a very large wolf spider with orange/black tiger striped abdomen in the same location i'm going to be this year. I'm hoping to find one of those at least.

Does anybody have some advice as to what else I should look for, where to look, how to look, etc? My current method is just looking in shady spots, flipping over rocks and logs, etc. Even though i'm camping mountaintop there are streams all around in the valleys so i can look in wet places too. So... Dolodomes? Lycosa (of course), jumpers, are there mygalomorphs in the Appalachians?

 

[jsloan]

Does anybody have some advice as to what else I should look for, where to look, how to look, etc?

One productive collection technique is beating bushes. Put a white sheet (or open umbrella) underneath and either shake the bush or beat the branches with a stick. Bugs will fall onto the sheet, including spiders. You might find a lot of jumpers this way. A sweep net is also good.

Have a good trip and post some pictures if you find anything interesting.

 

[Miss Bianca]

AND- if you rearrange it, make sure to put it back the way it was..
or as much as possible...

 

[Widowman10]

good suggestion jsloan. i've found this to be most productive while looking for bugs more than spiders though. although you did mention you could find jumpers this way. some interesting things will fall on the sheet, it's a cool way to find diffferent things. if i were you, i would use as many techniques as possible to find things. i would use the sheet (as mentioned) and beat bushes and trees; pitfalls with several different kinds of attracting liquids/mixtures/bait; maybe even a freshly killed carcass to attract carrion beetles or flies or whatever; and i would most definitely do a night attraction- setting up a big white sheet and shining a really bright light on it to attract the sweet huge moths that live on the eastern half of the US. to me, the moths over that way are awesome and should definitely be sought after with some technique happy hunting and let us know how things work out.

oh, and find some widows too...

 

[Moltar]

Thanks folks. I'll try the bushbeating for certain. A nighttime light trap may be a little more difficult since there's no power where i'll be. The pitfalls are a given.

Anybody know about the mygalomorphs? Are there any to be found?

 

[jsloan]

Anybody know about the mygalomorphs? Are there any to be found?

There are some trapdoor spiders, I think. I have a paper lying around somewhere that describes a few of them ... Myrmekiaphila sp. (Cyrtaucheniidae), for example. I think there might also be some Ctenizidae and Antrodiaetidae.

Good luck on catching any, though.

 

[Moltar]

Yeah, i'd be pretty lucky to even find their door... Thanks though!

 

[cacoseraph]

Myrmekiaphila foliata (Hentz) from Mercer Co., West Virginia
from the google hit stub
"BioOne Online Journals - A Taxonomic Review of the Trapdoor Spider ...
Recent phylogenetic analyses of the Mygalomorphae (Bond and Hedin, 2006; Hedin and Bond, .... Myrmekiaphila foliata (Hentz) from Mercer Co., West Virginia. ...
www.bioone.org/doi/pdf/10.1206/0003-0082(2007)3596[1:ATROTT]2.0.CO;2 - "
article is not free. i never understand how google can see inside unfree pdfs. puts bad ideas in my head =P



maybe Sphodros, too


still looking



also, in CA it is illegal to pit trap for herps... how to prove i am going after bugs might be a problem. you could consider checkig out the legality for WV... but it probably isn't a huge deal




http://www.mygalomorphae.org/mygalwebsite/images/myrmektable.xls
has locs for three Myrm's in WV

 

[Moltar]

Thanks for all the helpful info guys, I really appreciate it.

Caco, that spreadsheet was particularly interesting. And as far as pit trapping laws... well lets just say that private property doesn't get much more private than where i'm going to be. I always endeavor to make as little impact as possible in anything i do in the wilderness as well. I only plan on keeping one or two specimens at the most, this will be mostly for photographs.

Even in the unlikely event that I find a trap burrow I don't think i'll be digging it up. They're better off where they are.

 

[jsloan]

And as far as pit trapping laws...

I wouldn't worry about it. You'd have to put out a hundred traps, each no more than a few feet apart, and leave them there for the entire season to have a negative impact on the invertebrate populations within the small area they covered. There are literally tens of thousands of spiders in any location you visit over the course of a weekend (we never see most of them), especially in old-growth areas. A few pitfall traps would be like spitting into a lake.

 

[Godzirra]

What part of West Virginia, i just came back from Seneca Rocks - i walked the trail.
No need to go out of your way to find spiders, walk a trail and spiders will come out and greet you.
I saw plenty of wolf spiders rolling their eggs, crazy small spiders, large spiders, plenty of millipedes.

In my backyard alone i have came across plenty in my backyard as well, some cool things I've seen were
(what i assume and lots of people also suggested, trapdoor spider)

(lived in my husbands corvette)

 

[Godzirra]

Thanks folks. I'll try the bushbeating for certain. A nighttime light trap may be a little more difficult since there's no power where i'll be. The pitfalls are a given.

You should purchase a solar light, they usually cost about $2 range,
http://www.siliconsolar.com/shop/solarimages/Solar-Bubble-Light-Short_T.jpg
most likely in the garden section, i have one in my yard, and they last all night

 

[ZergFront]

hmmm...

Use a sweep net to collect bugs in foliage - most insects and spiders first means of self-preservation is to just drop off the plant or bat branches and shrubs over a large white sheet. Most jumpers can just be spotted hunting in the daylight or found resting by looking under rocks and inside curled leaves. Many spiders like leaf litter.