Who thought I'd be the one asking for a spider ID?

[RezonantVoid]

Ive had this on my mind for 2 days straight. An aracnological mystery that's got my mind ticking over and over. I keep every main type of primitive spider to be found in this country (tarantulas, trapdoors, wishbones, funnelwebs, mouse spiders and curtain webs), and id like to think i have knowledge of the majority of these pretty down pat.

But every time i think i know anything half decent, somebody has to bring me a photo of something to just blow my mind. We were having dinner with our neighbours one last time before moving house the other night and browsing some photo albums from a camping trip to Cape York, far north QLD. 1 picture in particular caught my attention, a kind of web ive never seen before, that to me is indistinguishablely mygalomorph in appearance. It's like the webbing of Theraphosidae, Atracidae and Dipluridae all combined into one. I have been given permission to upload these photos-of-photos of a species i have no idea about


Looks normal enough right? Probably just some tarantula...
Until it isn't. Heavy webbing terrestrial T's in this country are limited to 2 genus, Selenocosmia/Phlogius and Coremiocnemis. These 2 have very large clean sheets of webbing, not wirey and stranded like above.

So maybe it's a funnelweb? Aren't we supposed to have them under every rock and log according to the internet? No again. Atracids (and Actinopods) have identically built wirey triplines, but in a contained area close to the burrow. Even very compact colonies rarely overlap each other's strike zones outside the burrows.

What about a curtain web? Dont they make very large sheets of webbing? While that is indeed true, they prefer much higher soil moisture, shelter, and vertical space than seen above. Even in the wild, their webs are often very tightly stretched across the space between 2 objects and much less dry in appearance.

But the final icing on the cake that gets me really excited for this, is the sheer scale of the webbing.



No folks, thats not sand.



Thats all WEBBING.


Like that wave of sea foam that burries everyone's towels on a tourist beach, this massive sheet of silk blankets quite an impressive area of ground. Ive heard that in some parts of the Australia there are tiny true spiders that cover entire fields in undulating sheets of thin webbing, but that is not like this intricate construct with visible burrows underneath the rocks and thick wirey triplines.

The scale of the webbing in my eyes indisputably points to multiple spiders inhabiting the structure. The appearance of the webbing to me looks very much that of a Mygalomorph of some kind, and if that is indeed the case, this could be one of first (or the first? Idk lol) documentation of primitive spiders potentially living communally by choice.

I have done a google search and couldnt find anything to match these photos, or any stories of them in news articles. For any Aussies that may be able to assist, i was told the spectacle was seen in Lakefield National Park. Id really love to have even the slightest insight into what species could have built these webs.

Thank you all for reading.

 

[The Snark]

Zap those pics off to Jaeger at Senckenberg.

 

[basin79]

Will it not be from slings hatching from multiple eggsacs making their way into the world?

 

[RezonantVoid]

Will it not be from slings hatching from multiple eggsacs making their way into the world?

Definitely not, but that phenomenon does occur down far south of this region with true spiders. You can readily find stories about towns getting burried in webbing. While indeed most primitives are short range endemics, not even curtain web slings do this around their mothers burrow. The issue with joining webs is if a prey item lands in the middle of 5 different burrows, theres a high chance that (given each spider nearby can detect the prey item on the connected web), a spider may get eaten by its neighbors in the confusion of them all going in for the kill. This is to my understanding why most primitive spiders spread out from each other after exiting the mothers burrow.

Zap those pics off to Jaeger at Senckenberg.

Ill absolutely be sending these off to Australian Museum

 

[The Snark]

Ill absolutely be sending these off to Australian Museum

I'm looking forwards to reading a nice long technical explanation! Serious puzzler. Or maybe just an odd confluence of animals and conditions.

 

[Ungoliant]

Thats all WEBBING.

The scale of the webbing in my eyes indisputably points to multiple spiders inhabiting the structure. The appearance of the webbing to me looks very much that of a Mygalomorph of some kind, and if that is indeed the case, this could be one of first (or the first? Idk lol) documentation of primitive spiders potentially living communally by choice.

That is a huge amount of webbing; could it be the work of more than one spider, either a social species or one that at least tolerates other individuals living nearby?

The webbing does look more like that of a mygalomorph than an araneomorph; are there even social species of mygalomorph?

It sounds like someone needs to make a field trip to the park and look for giant webs on the ground.

 

[RezonantVoid]

That is a huge amount of webbing; could it be the work of more than one spider, either a social species or one that at least tolerates other individuals living nearby?

The webbing does look more like that of a mygalomorph than an araneomorph; are there even social species of mygalomorph?

It sounds like someone needs to make a field trip to the park and look for giant webs on the ground.

These are all questions that keep going around in my head. But after a bit of pondering, im fairly certain this is not mere tolerance for other spiders in close proximity, but communal living. To me it all keeps coming back to how food is managed when multiple spiders sense the same prey landing. Its either a communal species that shares similar social feeding behavior to captive Balfouri's, or a species that webs an absolutely massive radius of earth around a central burrow.

The problem with the latter is there would still be food competition at the edges of each spider's strike zone, risk of predation from traveling far outside the burrow, and the risk of slings getting cannibalized by larger adults every time they leave their mothers burrow. In fact, how would males even make it 15 inches from their burrows without getting eaten by their siblings? Theres just so many questions but only speculative answers which to me so far is, strong potential for the first documented communal primitive spiders. I dont know of any such species in Mygalomorphae, at least not yet. Hopefully the Aus Museum can provide the answers, im gonna flip if its just some regular old species but the lack of results on google have me fairly certain it isnt

 

[viper69]

Keep us posted

 

[Smotzer]

Man I’d try and take a trip out there and locate that spot! This is incredible! I look forward to reading more about this. The sheer amount of webbing is insanse!

 

[AphonopelmaTX]

Just how big of an area does the webbing cover? There is no sense of scale in the photos of the photos.

 

[RezonantVoid]

Just how big of an area does the webbing cover? There is no sense of scale in the photos of the photos.

In the last picture you can see it covers almost the entirety of a small hill, and doesnt seem to be at its end towards the top of the photo. The photo-takers described it covering roughly a few hundred square metres, and there could have been much more attached to it

 

[EpicEpic]

In the last picture you can see it covers almost the entirety of a small hill, and doesnt seem to be at its end towards the top of the photo. The photo-takers described it covering roughly a few hundred square metres, and there could have been much more attached to it

Wow. Then those pictures don't begin to do it justice!!

When I first saw the photos (before reading the explanation) it looked like a burrow of sorts with webbing on top in strands....no way did I think that was ALL webbing!

I'd love to know the conclusion...

 

[AphonopelmaTX]

In the last picture you can see it covers almost the entirety of a small hill, and doesnt seem to be at its end towards the top of the photo. The photo-takers described it covering roughly a few hundred square metres, and there could have been much more attached to it

So a sheet web that covers that much area has got to be some species of social spider or a spiderling dispersal event. In the close up photos the silk appears to cribellate (silk with a wooly fibrous appearance). I would start the search with araneomorph spiders with a cribellum that produce large sheet webs either as adults or as emerging spiderlings. That would exclude any mygale species.

Here are two examples of each scenario from Australia. Not sure if any of these fit though.

Sheet-weaver spider swarm spins huge web

READING LEVEL: GREEN

www.kidsnews.com.au

Millions of Spiders Rain Down on Australia—Why?

In what's called a mass ballooning, the tiny arachnids used silk strands to catch air currents on their way to a new home.

www.nationalgeographic.com

 

[RezonantVoid]

So a sheet web that covers that much area has got to be some species of social spider or a spiderling dispersal event. In the close up photos the silk appears to cribellate (silk with a wooly fibrous appearance). I would start the search with araneomorph spiders with a cribellum that produce large sheet webs either as adults or as emerging spiderlings.

Here are two examples of each from Australia. Not sure if any of these fit though.

Sheet-weaver spider swarm spins huge web

READING LEVEL: GREEN

www.kidsnews.com.au

Millions of Spiders Rain Down on Australia—Why?

In what's called a mass ballooning, the tiny arachnids used silk strands to catch air currents on their way to a new home.

www.nationalgeographic.com

As i mentioned above, there are absolutely araneomorph spiders in this country that do this, and those were the exact 2 article i had in mind.

However, all known instances of this happening are far south of where these photos were taken, im talking 3-5 days of solid highway driving away. Campbelltown and Adelaide are 2 such places that come to mind. The biggest difference between these southern instances and the photos from around cape york (aside from both occurring in completely opposite ends of the country), is the silk texture. The town-burrying sheet weavers generally use light, fine silk that enables them to become easily airborne, in areas with lots of high vantage points so they can get into the sky with less effort.

The Lakefield webbing appears more permanent in structure on flat ground with webbing leading underneath hides like rocks, leading me to believe it a burrowing species. There are numerous true spiders here that produce cribellate silk, but none that i know of which burrow, socialise, or produce the wide flat sheets of webbing also seen. It could very well though, be a new Australian genus of araneomorphs, as social behavior is more common in that group. Im eagerly awaiting a response from the Aus Museum

 

[RezonantVoid]

Received this email today from the Aus Museum

 

[EpicEpic]

Received this email today from the Aus Museum
View attachment 352623

You have a COOL NAME!

 

[RezonantVoid]

You have a COOL NAME!

Im glad you like it haha, im not too fussed about hiding it and alot of members here do know me by name, but i chose to not display the name of the Museum staff at the bottom of the email. I will be making further enquiries on the subject of potential communal habitation

 

[schmiggle]

The only diplurid in the appropriate range is Masteria toddae, but a number of Euagridae (formerly Dipluridae) are potentially reasonable candidates. The elevation of Euagridae to family was this month, so I'm not surprised that the museum website still lists these genera as Dipluridae. It's pretty cool that they use the webs to catch snails. After doing some research, I believe there are only three genera (as currently described) that this species could belong to: Australothele, Cethegus, and Namirea. There's very little information about the natural history of these genera that I can readily find, though I'll do some more sleuthing.

 

[RezonantVoid]

The only diplurid in the appropriate range is Masteria toddae, but a number of Euagridae (formerly Dipluridae) are potentially reasonable candidates. The elevation of Euagridae to family was this month, so I'm not surprised that the museum website still lists these genera as Dipluridae. It's pretty cool that they use the webs to catch snails. After doing some research, I believe there are only three genera (as currently described) that this species could belong to: Australothele, Cethegus, and Namirea. There's very little information about the natural history of these genera that I can readily find, though I'll do some more sleuthing.

I vastly appreciate you taking the time to research some of our native spiders! Thanks

All good observations, i also came to similar conclusions early on. However, here's some interesting food for thought. While all 3 genus are present in QLD, its good to note the behavior and characteristics of each. Firstly with Cethegus, while ive never actually kept or encountered this genus, i believe the majority prefer to build their burrows in the middle of tall grass clumps and use the grass blades as structural support for their webbing. Secondly with Namirea, they are one of the smallest curtain web genus here and its very unlikely such large scale webbing could be attributed to them. And finally that brings me to Australothele, which i have the most experience with. Ive seen colonies of A.Nambucca many times, and a very prominent feature of every burrow ive seen is the remains of other unfortunate members of their species. These guys are highly cannibalistic and ive lost a male during a breeding attempt once. Maybe its only A.Nambucca that does this, but i cant see Australothele sharing webs over such a large area.

Of the 3 mentioned, Cethegus seems the most plausible, but if this is an entirely new species or genus im not going to be surprised in the slightest

 

[The Snark]

@RezonantVoid Got a something for you from one of the world's foremost mosquito identifiers. I mention the unusual webbing to him and he tossed back, environmental factors. The habitat should be closely examined, biologically and botanically and well as humidity and temperature, and not just in present time but as long a period into the past as can be assessed.
His logical conclusion being these may be a new species, or one already well described that has adapted to certain circumstances. He explained he's encountered several variations of mosquito that superficially looked to be a new species or sub species but under the microscope weren't. Simply had undergone minor alterations due to outside the norm ongoing environmental factors.
(Pardon me for being long winded there. I keep reminding myself to take a recorder with me when talking to that man. When his interest gets triggered he verbally writes up an extensive highly technical white paper that deserves several weeks of study. 40+ years as an active field researcher entomologist.)