She asked BugFan Mike if it might be a wolf spider called the Burrowing Wolf Spider (Geolycosa missouriensis<\/em>).\u00a0He said that was a possibility and urged her (as always) to be conservative in her spider IDs, especially considering the quality of the picture.\u00a0Amen, Mike!\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wolf spiders (family Lycosidae) (lycosa<\/em>\u00a0is Greek for \u201cwolf\u201d) are common, hairy, nocturnal, ground-dwelling hunters with very good eyesight. Most species of wolf spider do not spin trap webs.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n [Quick Detour: nowadays, we use the name \u201ctarantula<\/a><\/em>\u201d to refer to a group of non-Lycosid, palm-sized, hairy, tropical spiders.\u00a0The BugLady\u2019s 4th<\/sup>\u00a0grade teacher told a story of being in basic training in California and digging foxholes that bisected tarantula borrows, which she thought was pretty cool (she doesn\u2019t remember much else of 4th<\/sup>\u00a0grade).\u00a0Anyway, the original tarantula is a southern European\/Italian wolf spider.\u00a0Legend had it that if one bites you, you\u2018re doomed to dance a dance called the tarantella. The BugLady assumes that when they saw the big hairy spiders, those settlers from the Old Country applied the name of a scary spider that they already knew about. And in fact, a number of other groups of large spiders have been called tarantulas, too].<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wolf spiders in the genus\u00a0Geolycosa<\/em>\u00a0are called the Burrowing wolf spiders (geo<\/em>\u00a0means \u201cearth\u201d). They live in vertical burrows, and they are habitat specialists, preferring loose, sandy soil that makes digging easier.\u00a0Of the 75 species in the genus worldwide, 18 live in North America north of the Rio Grande.\u00a0They have strong legs and (short spider anatomy review, here) two strong chelicerae (jaws) that are used as pincers and that are tipped with fangs. A pair of palps<\/a>, which look like a short leg on each side of the chelicerae, are used to manipulate food.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Burrowing wolf spiders are generally Stay-at-Homes \u2013 the spiderlings don\u2019t scatter far from the maternal burrow.\u00a0They initiate their own lair when they\u2019re very small, enlarging it as they grow, rarely straying more than an inch or so away from it, and retreating into it when alarmed. Populations remain fairly restricted.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n They are tied to one spot, with fixed pools of prey and of potential mates, but the trade-off is an absence of Flying Monkeys.They can dodge predators and avoid desiccation within a relatively stable, climate-controlled tunnel. In early fall, though, when a young spider\u2019s fancy turn to love, he abandons that security and sets off in search of romance.\u00a0They mate in late summer, but the gravid female doesn\u2019t make an egg sac until the next spring. She displays maternal care<\/a> \u2013 carrying around first her egg sac, and later her young\u00a0(and not eating them).\u00a0Spiderlings hatch in early summer, overwinter as immature spiders in their first year, and become adults in late summer of their second year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gratuitous vocabulary word(s) of the day: some\u00a0Geolycosa<\/em>\u00a0species are \u201cturricolous<\/em>\u201d (they live in areas that have some leaf litter, and they create little turrets or lips made of debris, sand, and silk around the opening of the tunnel<\/a>), and others are \u201caturricolous<\/em>\u201d (they don\u2019t).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bracing itself within the tunnel with its legs, the spider uses its fangs to loosen the sand, and if the sand is not moist enough on its own, it uses silk to compact the sand into a pellet.\u00a0It uses its chelicerae and palps to move the pellet to the opening of the burrow, and it disposes of the pellet by flicking it away (sometimes a foot away) with its forelegs – unless it\u2019s going to use it to build a turret. Burrowing wolf spiders reinforce the upper section of their lair by covering the walls with a few layers of silk.\u00a0Summer burrows are less than a foot long, but winter burrows may be more than five feet deep.\u00a0Researchers who studied\u00a0Geolycosa missouriensis<\/em>\u00a0noted that a spider excavating an average burrow removed 918 sand pellets.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Larry Weber, in\u00a0Spiders of the North Woods, says that if you stick a grass stem down an occupied\u00a0Geolycosa missouriensis<\/em>\u00a0burrow, the spider will grab it and hang on, and you can dig out the entrance and see the spider.\u00a0Seriously, Larry?\u00a0 All that work – 918 pellets \u2013 why would you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n They ambush their prey \u2013 lurking in the entryway and darting out to grab nocturnal invertebrates like crickets as they wander by.\u00a0They feed within, and the indigestible bits of prey fall to the end of the tunnel. About the\u00a0Geolycosa<\/em>, the publication \u201cThe Insects and Arachnids of Canada, Part 17,\u201d notes that when kept in captivity, \u201cThey should be individually caged because they are fierce predators, and cannibalism can soon reduce the culture to a single well-fed individual<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n So – who was in that burrow? Here are a few possibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A BURROWING WOLF SPIDER (Geolycosa missouriensis<\/a><\/em>), aka the Missouri Earth Spider or the Missouri Wolf Spider, is found on sandy loam soils from Texas to Ontario and Saskatchewan.\u00a0Its leg-spread is around 1 \u00bd\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The gravid female uses sand and silk to fashion a door for the tunnel in winter. She will bring her egg case into the sun at the burrow opening on warm, spring days, and females can be found in their burrows carrying young on their back in early summer.\u00a0Sources are ambivalent about whether\u00a0Geolycosa missouriensis<\/em>\u00a0makes turrets. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n GEOLYCOSA WRIGHTII<\/em>\u00a0(no common name<\/a>)\u00a0It\u2019s not as common, and its range is restricted to sand dunes and beaches from Indiana and Illinois north through the Western Great Lakes states and provinces.\u00a0Females protect their newly-hatched offspring by sealing themselves into the tunnel with their young for a few days, until they find their feet. Geolycosa wrightii<\/em>\u00a0doesn\u2019t make a turret.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The BEACH WOLF SPIDER\u00a0(Arctosa littoralis<\/a><\/em>) also makes silk-lined tunnels, but unlike the\u00a0Geolycosa<\/em>, it hunts at night by chasing after prey on beaches and wetland banks, and shelters in tunnels or under driftwood in the day.\u00a0Entomologist Eric Eaton says that if you\u2019re abroad on the beach at night, wearing a headlamp, \u201cWhen the beam of the light hits a wolf spider, the animal\u2019s eyes will glint a blueish-green shine\u2026..and a female with young on her back looks like a diamond-studded stone.<\/em>\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The BugLady<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n Note: All links leave to external sites. Greetings, BugFans, One afternoon in late June as the BugLady was walking along the cordwalk at Kohler-Andrae State Park, she noticed a few half-inch-ish holes in the sand, holes that had more \u201cstructure\u201d …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32664,"featured_media":14685,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[8],"tags":[779,607,778,614,31,777,776],"class_list":["post-14684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bug-of-the-week","tag-beach-wolf-spiders","tag-bugs","tag-burrowing-wolf-spiders","tag-insects","tag-spiders","tag-tarantulas","tag-wolf-spiders"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"spider](\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2024\/03\/spider-hole-K-A23-2rz-300x214.webp\")
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