- Joined
- Sep 25, 2009
- Messages
- 160
I visited a local nature park in South New Jersey across the river from Philadelphia during the day this past weekend, and was surprised to come away empty handed. The park in question has open fields, woodlands and wetlands, and is home to local and migratory birds, deer, and small mammals.
It seems to me that this location should host different wolf and fishing spiders, p. audax and other jumpers, woodlouse hunters, and many others, but I saw very few spiders. Maybe a few specimens of a couple species of very small wolf spiders, and that's it! I'm sure d. triton are present in the ponds, but the shorelines that I could access were not good locations and I was mainly focused on terrestrial spiders.
Obviously, some things will remain unseen or are nocturnal, but it seemed extreme to me. I examined multiple habitats and found no webbing of any kind, and no obvious burrows. Flipped over rocks, bark, and tree limbs yielded no spiders at all...a first for me. What I DID see upon flipping various things were lots and lots of harvestman, earthworms, beetles, isopods, ants, termites, and centipedes, or nothing at all. There was also quite a bit of dragonfly and butterfly activity.
Unfortunately, I cannot visit this location at night, as I do not care to explain to the police what I'm doing creeping around with a headlamp, so I cannot speculate as to after-hours activity. Similarly, because this is a nature park, I'm not comfortable setting amateur pitfall traps either.
So what gives? Bad timing, signs of environmental distress, or a little of both? I'm a little bit perplexed because the park doesn't seem to be a general "dead zone", yet an important inhabitant appears to be missing.
It seems to me that this location should host different wolf and fishing spiders, p. audax and other jumpers, woodlouse hunters, and many others, but I saw very few spiders. Maybe a few specimens of a couple species of very small wolf spiders, and that's it! I'm sure d. triton are present in the ponds, but the shorelines that I could access were not good locations and I was mainly focused on terrestrial spiders.
Obviously, some things will remain unseen or are nocturnal, but it seemed extreme to me. I examined multiple habitats and found no webbing of any kind, and no obvious burrows. Flipped over rocks, bark, and tree limbs yielded no spiders at all...a first for me. What I DID see upon flipping various things were lots and lots of harvestman, earthworms, beetles, isopods, ants, termites, and centipedes, or nothing at all. There was also quite a bit of dragonfly and butterfly activity.
Unfortunately, I cannot visit this location at night, as I do not care to explain to the police what I'm doing creeping around with a headlamp, so I cannot speculate as to after-hours activity. Similarly, because this is a nature park, I'm not comfortable setting amateur pitfall traps either.
So what gives? Bad timing, signs of environmental distress, or a little of both? I'm a little bit perplexed because the park doesn't seem to be a general "dead zone", yet an important inhabitant appears to be missing.
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