Texas spiders' monstrous webs baffle scientists

[M.D. Holloway]

This is the stuff of nightmares!

Texas spiders' monstrous webs baffle scientists
Fri Aug 31, 2007 7:40pm EDT

LAKE TAWAKONI STATE PARK, Texas (Reuters) - Texans like to say everything in their state is bigger. They can now add spider webs to that list.

A monstrous network of sheet-like webs covering several acres has been spun over trees in this state park 50 miles (80 kms) east of Dallas, baffling scientists who say it is an almost-unheard-of occurrence in the region.

"The dominant spiders here seem to be long-jawed spiders but this is unusual. Social spiders build communal nests in the tropics but the longjaws are not social," said Mike Quinn, a Texas state insect biologist.

"We still don't have a clear answer for what is going on here," he said as he stood beneath the ghostly canopy of webbing which shrouded a patch of oak and juniper trees.

The eerie scene evoked a B-grade horror movie. Thunder rumbled in the distance as spiders skittered across Quinn's wide-brimmed hat.

He was collecting samples by using a metal rod to thrash branches over a "beat sheet" -- a sheet nailed to criss-crossed pieces off wood into which bugs would fall.

A startling number of creepy-crawlers fell from a single branch which Quinn thrashed, including several long-jawed spiders, also known as orb weavers.

"You would not want to be the prey item on the end of that," Quinn said as he held up one of the aptly named long jaws, a spindly but sinister looking thing with fangs jutting out at the end of its raptor-like jaws.

There are 10 species of longjaw in Texas and Quinn said he needed to take the specimens to other experts to determine precisely which ones they were.

There were several other species of spider in the webs, including large garden spiders.

"I've never seen anything like this before," said Ray Owings, who had come from Tyler 50 miles to the east just to look at the webbing.

Other scientists agreed it was an odd affair.

"You see this more often in tropical rain forests. Longjaws typically make the classic kind of orb web and not a sheet web," Roy Vogtsberger, an assistant professor with the biology department at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas, told Reuters by phone.

[trekkor]

Arachnaphobia!!

No doubt.


KT

[M.D. Holloway]

At first, it was so white it looked like fairyland," said park Superintendent Donna Garde. "Now it's filled with so many mosquitoes that it's turned a little brown. There are times you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in those webs."

Serves them right, the dirty blood-sucking bastards. Music to our ears, this lovely mosquito genocide.

In spite of the joy of hearing the shrieks of millions of dying mosquitoes, the thought of arachnids falling from the sky is a little much for some. Visitors to the Lake Tawakoni State Park either love it or hate it. Stalwarts from the media, however, were not to be deterred. Park officials have had to post guards along the trail to protect the giant spider web against the curious poking and prodding of grubby little fingers, and the flow of spectators is expected to increase over the weekend.

What caused these friendly little web-crawlers to create such a massive structure? Was it a group project by social spiders, working together in harmony, or was it solitary spiders spinning separate webs in an attempt to move away from one another? Perhaps it was the crack spider up to his usual tricks? Or, as Al Gore would have you believe, is this just another sign of the impeding doom that is global warming?

Although heated debate amongst entomology experts has taken place over the internet, the root cause of this phenomenon is still undecided. Superintendent Donna Garde wants the experts to investigate the web in person. A valid point, since the only scientific fact determined thus far has been that arguing over the internet is like the Special Olympics; even if you win, you're still retarded.

Herbert Pase, a Texas Forest Service entomologist, said, "From what I'm hearing, it could be a once in a lifetime event."

However, don't expect Lake Tawakoni State Park's giant spider web to stick around long enough to become the eighth wonder of the world. In fact, it probably won't last longer than late October, when the spiders complete their part in the circle of life, curl up their legs, and die, thus ending their tragically short existence.

[M.D. Holloway]

“When I first saw it,” said Park Superintendent Donna Garde, “I was totally amazed. What ran through my mind was that this looked like something out of a low-budget horror movie, but I was looking at something five times as big as what you’d see on a Hollywood set.”

Stumped as to the web’s origin, the initial consensus of arachnologists and entomologists who saw an online photo of the web sent by Texas Parks and Wildlife Department biologist Mike Quinn was that it may have resulted from a “mass dispersal” event. In such an event, millions of tiny spiders or spiderlings spin out silk filaments to ride air currents in a phenomenon known as “ballooning.”

Quinn collected a sample of spiders Aug. 31 from in and around the gigantic web and took them to Texas A&M University in College Station for analyses. Entomology Department researcher Allen Dean identified 11 spider families from the sample. The most prevalent species was the Tetragnatha guatemalensis, or what Quinn dubbed the Guatemalan long-jawed spider, since this species didn’t have a common name. Guatemala was the country in which it was first documented.

“I drove 50 to 100 spiders to A&M on Saturday,” Quinn said. “Spider experts tend to specialize in one or few families of spiders. There are nearly 900 species of spiders known from Texas, so no one is an expert on all the species.”

Quinn described the Lake Tawakoni web as “sheet webbing” since it covers a large area of trees, which is more typical of a web spun by a funnel web spider rather than the classic Charlotte’s web, or orb web, like that produced by long-jawed spiders. He speculates that the park’s spider population exploded due to wet conditions this summer that resulted in an abundance of midges and other a small insects upon which the spiders feed.

The Guatemalan long-jawed spider ranges from Canada to Panama, and even the islands of the Caribbean. According to Quinn, the spider is about an inch in length with a reddish-orange head- and-thorax. Spiders, like mites and scorpions, are arachnids, a group of arthropods with four pairs of legs, saclike lungs and a body divided into two segments.

So popular was the monster Lake Tawakoni spider web phenomenon that it ran as the lead story in the Nation section of the Aug. 31 New York Times, and was the newspaper’s most e-mailed article that day. The nightmarish quality of the story prompted satirical takes on several Internet Web sites and led to national coverage on Fox News, the Discovery Channel, CNN and other networks. Quinn termed the degree of news coverage “remarkable.”

Dr. Norman Horner, a retired dean of the College of Science and Mathematics at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, was on his way to the park mid-week to study the “not very common” phenomenon, when he received a call from park staff telling him that a heavy overnight rainstorm had made the trail impassable and knocked down much of the giant web.

“So far,” Horner said, “we have been informed of webs of this nature occurring in Florida, California, Canada, Italy, Ohio and now Texas. In all cases, they appear to have been produced by tetragnathids, but have other species associated with them.”

Superintendent Garde said Sept. 5 that the crowds coming to see the wondrous creation had slowed to a trickle, and that they were not being allowed to access the nature trail due to the sloppy conditions.

“It was fun, but we were really tired,” Garde said. “The spiders are great little guys. They put our park on the map.”

[trekkor]

I'm not going there...


Nope. Nah gah nah.


KT

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Yikes!

That'd give me the heebie-jeebies.

[rouxroux]

Originally Posted by Wayne at Pelican Parts

That's pretty cool!

-Wayne

Wayne, instead of releasing Boris into your neighbor's yard, you should have sent him for a vacation in Texas!

[HardDrive]

Glitch in the matrix.

[onewhippedpuppy]

That would make me scream like a 6 year old girl.

[sammyg2]

spiders hate george bush.

[M.D. Holloway]

Anytime you have a social environ you need a leader...




The strange part of this is that there are other types of spiders living in harmony as well. I guess it all has to do with competition. As long as there is an ample food source (skeeters) than natural competitors can live together.

I guess if the whole world was well fed than there wouldn't be any wars? Nahh...

[speedracer]

Why do I feel itchy all of a sudden..

[M.D. Holloway]

Here ya go, pick your fav!

[CJFusco]

that is amazing!

[Drdogface]

I've seen the same (on a much smaller scale) on some Live Oaks in Ca. My guess would have been caterpillar attack. Usually the trees don't make it.

[Mule]

Isn't everything bigger in Texas?

[M.D. Holloway]

so says my wife...

[Jims5543]

Originally Posted by trekkor

I'm not going there...


Nope. Nah gah nah.


KT

We encountered a piece of property here in Florida like that, I had 2 crews refuse to step foot on the property. I believe they were Banana spiders IIRC.

Finally we called the developer and asked if he could clear the lot 1st. He didn't believe me and went out to it. He called back and told me the clearing had been ordered and he had never seen anything like that.

I went out to look and it freaked me out too and I am not that scared of Spiders, Bees, Hornets, Wasps... yes but not so much Spiders.

That picture above gave me the hee bee jee bees.