Dark Fishing Spider

Description:

The body measured a little over an inch. 3 inches leg to leg.

Habitat:

Basement This is a spider of deciduous forests. Despite the moniker of “fishing spider,” this particular species is frequently found far from water. Look for the spiders waiting motionless in ambush on tree trunks, fenceposts, walls, and other vertical surfaces, mostly at night. The spiders dash into tree holes, under bark, and into crevices when startled.

Notes:

Web This is a powerful hunting spider that does not spin a prey-catching snare. Females will, however, construct a tangled “nursery web” among foliage where they will suspend their egg sac and guard the emerging spiderlings. Season These spiders mature in late spring, and reproduce in mid-summer. Nearly adult spiders overwinter in protected places, such as under rocks or loose bark. Food Prey is composed of large insects and even small vertebrates that the spider can overpower. This includes small fish (e.g. minnows) and various aquatic insects when this spider hangs out near bodies of water. Life Cycle The egg sac is a grayish sphere, approximately 15mm in diameter, held in the jaws of the female as she wanders. Eventually the spider suspends her egg sac in a tangled “nursery web” amid foliage well off the ground. There she stands guard over the package and the spiderlings that later emerge from it. The spiderlings will remain in the nursery web until their next molt, at which time they disperse. Remarks The fishing spiders are frequently mistaken for wolf spiders, but the arrangement of the eyes is graphically different between the two families; and fishing spiders are more likely to be seen in the vertical plane (whereas wolf spiders, while they can climb, are mostly seen in the horizontal plane on the ground, stones, and logs).