Wow! This is just crazy!

[Biollantefan54]

I use to could never find any widows! Now I can go outside and find them anywhere! I have found 2 L. mactans and 7+ L. geometricus's! I am shocked at how much the color varies on the brown widows. I found one that looks almost like a black widow but the only difference is the hourglass is a little more orange and the last section of the legs are a dark dark DARK brown and then the other one is like marbled white and light brown and red dots and white. It is just crazy! They are some of the most prettiest spiders I have seen. Today, I have seen over 5 brown widows. I found some good places to find them too. My porch has some concrete slightly forward then the rest and they are a bunch of slings in there. I found a juvenile female with 2 male brown widows there and another female 4 feet away. Another good spot is your city/state garbage can. There is a lot of little crevices and sections in them and I managed to find 3 juveniles in there. I am so happy haha! I am about to start some breeding programs XD. Where do you all find them?

 

[darksidemxer]

Feel free to come take all u want from my garage. I have some of the largest widows brown and black that most people have ever seen.

 

[Biollantefan54]

Lucky XD. Don't you have red widows in your range? Widows are some of the prettiest true spiders in my opinion. Oh, and even crazier, a fast reply after 9 Pm!

 

[Beary Strange]

You would be in heaven in my apartment. I live on the end of my building and my particular apartment juts out, so I have 3 full sides attached to no other building. And I am surrounded on all 3 of those sides my insane amounts of l.geometricus. They are very pretty and it's nice to have them around (bugs simply DO NOT get in my apartment-they'd have to get through a barrage of these guys) but it does make going outside at night a bit precarious. A few even invited themselves indoors, mostly males. But our largest female was found by my boyfriend freshly molted inside and at the uppermost part of our main window; he didn't have the heart to put her back outside since she had a few molts in evidence and clearly had been there awhile, so we gave her an enclosure. :3 Totally normal reaction to a widow indoors. XD;;;

 

[JayDangerVL]

I've lived in this house next to a swamp for three years, and the spider population changes dramatically every summer. The first year it was all grass spiders, second year was entirely Eastern Parson, then this past year I couldn't find anything but Phidippus Audax! It's incredible how quickly an entire species can appear and disappear from a setting.

 

[Biollantefan54]

@JayDangerVL: I didn't know there was even spiders up there that high! XD. I bet they are easy to catch too because it is soooooo cold compared to here!

@asphyxiate: Well you have everything there, tarantulas, scorpions, solifugids, and tons of widows. Over here, you don't run into widows a lot here to this is really shocking right now lol. I remember in Georgia, you couldn't lift anything up without finding a black widow lol.

 

[Beary Strange]

@asphyxiate: Well you have everything there, tarantulas, scorpions, solifugids, and tons of widows. Over here, you don't run into widows a lot here to this is really shocking right now lol. I remember in Georgia, you couldn't lift anything up without finding a black widow lol.

It's funny you say that, as I just just lamenting that the East coast has such awesome house spiders that I simply never see here.

 

[Biollantefan54]

Like what XD? Tiny little cobweb spiders? Tons of MM grass spiders? What special spiders are you talking about!? XD

 

[JayDangerVL]

@JayDangerVL: I didn't know there was even spiders up there that high! XD. I bet they are easy to catch too because it is soooooo cold compared to here!

I think you can find spiders pretty much anywhere--except for like, an arctic tundra. Besides, it does get terribly cold up here in my opinion (can't wait to move to California, lol) but according to this fantastic website that asphyxiate shared with me, some species of spider can go dormant but stay alive still at -5 degrees celsius!

 

[Hanska]

I think you can find spiders pretty much anywhere--except for like, an arctic tundra. Besides, it does get terribly cold up here in my opinion (can't wait to move to California, lol) but according to this fantastic website that asphyxiate shared with me, some species of spider can go dormant but stay alive still at -5 degrees celsius!

Just look at the map in wikipedia where wolf spiders(Lycosidae) can be found. Theres not many places outside antarctica that lacks them.
Regarding the -5 celsius, I'd like to hear from someone where do spiders here go for the winter? In a few months we'll have -30 to -35 celsius and the ground is going to be frozen half a meter deep. Still we have spiders that live a few years. Impressive little buggers.

 

[Smokehound714]

The geos are getting really bad in my neck of the woods... I cant even find any hesperus unless i travel to wilderness regions, and now, the only places I find them, are under rocks.

Many species of spiders enter diapause during cold weather. Jumpers and wolves both can do this.

 

[JayDangerVL]

The geos are getting really bad in my neck of the woods... I cant even find any hesperus unless i travel to wilderness regions, and now, the only places I find them, are under rocks.

Many species of spiders enter diapause during cold weather. Jumpers and wolves both can do this.

For sure. It makes me sad though, because I miss seeing jumpers around like I used to during the summer.

 

[Biollantefan54]

I found like 6 more brown widows lol. I wish we had northern widows here, they look so cool! I cant really find black widows other than the 2 I found.