{"id":6056,"date":"2010-07-27T10:09:20","date_gmt":"2010-07-27T15:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/?p=6056"},"modified":"2017-06-04T15:45:52","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T20:45:52","slug":"funnel-web-spider","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/bug-of-the-week\/funnel-web-spider\/","title":{"rendered":"Funnel Web Spider (Family Agelenidae)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Greetings, BugFans,<\/p>\n

If you Google \u201cfunnel web spider,\u201d the initial hits will be about Australian funnel web spiders, many of which are exceedingly venomous (especially Atrax robustus<\/em>, who you will want to avoid should you ever set foot in Sydney). The BugLady once read an author who mused about why Australia, which lacks predators larger than a dingo (and most are much smaller), should have such an array of highly toxic snakes\/spiders\/octopi\/etc. Having 12 times the amount of venom required to kill a horse\u201d is, by the BugLady\u2019s reckoning at least, a pretty good definition of \u201chighly toxic.\u201d The good news, according to the excellent bugguide.net<\/a>, is that the spiders that we in the U.S. call funnel-web spiders are in the family Agelenidae and are 99.9% harmless to people. The Aussie funnel web spiders are in a family of primitive spiders called Hexathelidae in the suborder Mygalomorphae. We\u2019re familiar with Mygalomorphs because the big spiders we call tarantulas in the Americas are in the same suborder but are in the family Theraphosidae. These are more properly called bird spiders or hairy mygalomorphs. Hmmm—we\u2019ve gotten into deep water pretty early in the game, here. The true (Old World) tarantula, whose toxic bite can only be counteracted by dancing a frenetic Italian dance that came to be known as the tarantell\u2019a, is in the wolf spider family, Lycosidae. One of those instances of an old name getting recycled in a new country. There are about 600 species of FWSs worldwide, with half that number residing in North America. The Lesser European House Spider (Tegenaria domestica<\/em>) is a naturalized American citizen whose ancestors probably arrived by boat from the Old World in the 1600\u2019s. T. domestica<\/em> is also called the cellar spider (not to be confused with the long-bodied cellar spider of previous BOTW fame). The webs of spiders in this genus emphasize the funnel, not the platform.<\/p>\n

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A male FWS lives to mate, and after mating, dies (please do not search for metaphors here). To woo his lady\/ladies, he communicates by sound—vibrations called stridulations<\/em> (noises made by friction, like grasshoppers and crickets)—and by touch—he strokes the female\u2019s web seductively (again—no metaphors here). If the female allows him to occupy her web, they exchange bodily fluids. The lives of many females are restricted to their webs (still, no metaphors, but it\u2019s getting harder…). If his life is devoted to the search for mates, hers is dedicated to being egg-ready, and to this end she concentrates on staying well-nourished. After mating, she creates a disc-shaped egg case and lays up to 200 eggs inside. Hiding her egg case in a crevice is her final act before she dies in fall, often with the egg case \u201cin hand.\u201d Her young hatch in spring, and they may disperse from their natal area on foot or by spinning tiny silken threads\/\u201dballoons\u201d and taking to the air.<\/p>\n

FWSs resemble wolf spiders. Both groups dress in shades\/stripes of gray\/brown; FWSs are slimmer than wolf spiders, with bodies no longer than an inch and with coarsely-bristled legs. Two spinnerets (silk-spinning organs) are prominent appendages at the end of their abdomen. One species of FWS may look and act pretty much like another species of FWS. FWSs are believed to have poor vision, despite their eight eyes that are usually arranged in two rows of four.<\/p>\n

Wolf spiders don\u2019t spin webs, but FWSs spin wonderful webs—flat, horizontal sheet webs with a tornado-shaped hole (funnel) leading down from the bottom layer and, if the web is located near shrubs, some guy-lines stretching up. Webs are generally spun on top of the grass (one group of FWSs is called \u201cgrass spiders\u201d), but they can also be found in bushes and at the bases of woodpiles and buildings. Some over-achieving spiders make webs that are several feet across. Funnel webs are very tough, and if they are not disturbed they can last for months. Funnel webs are easily seen when they are covered with raindrops and look like a handful of diamonds tossed onto the grass. Recently, when the basswood flowers were falling, the FWS webs in the BugLady\u2019s back yard were festooned with old flowers (it must drive the spiders crazy, running out to check each time a flower jolts the web).<\/p>\n

There is some disagreement about the modus operandi<\/em> of these commonly-observed spiders. <\/p>\n