Oh snap, I saw her this morning with the a tiny ball of web, and now this..

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  Drea

• May 29, 2019

@Ungoliant that is the plan, find a safe place, take off the lid, and hope all goes well.

It was cool to watch her whip out that sac in less than a day.

 

• 

  Ungoliant

• May 29, 2019

@Drea The native black widows need all the help they can get against the invasive brown widows.

 

• 

  Drea

• May 30, 2019

So true.. I have seen less and less black widows every year.

Omg, I just got all choked up remember Blackie, my first spider ever that got all this started for me 32 years ago.

 

• 

  Ungoliant

• May 30, 2019

@Drea About 15-20 years ago, I would regularly find Latrodectus mactans, but now I only find L. geometricus. Browns not only outbreed the native widows, but they tolerate more exposed habitats.

The only thing that seems to beat brown widows is Parasteatoda tepidariorum. Where they fluorish, I rarely find widows.

 

• 

  Drea

• May 30, 2019

@Ungoliant That is very interesting and seems like the browns would take them out too.

In Southern California, I only found a few browns and suddenly it was more and more and way less L. Hesperus and L. Mactans.

Central California has a decent amount of L. Hesperus but I have not seen the L. geometricus much so that is probably why.