Talk:Spider/Archive 2

Question

In this article I didn't find the Onomatopoeia of the spiders. I seriously NEED that information. Can you please tell me how the spiders sound? Do they shout when they feel pain? Please answer as fast as you can, and please try to add that info in the article. Twicemost 02:38, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, it seems the article is abandoned, so ..... thanks for NOTHING! Twicemost (talk) 06:04, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Please add at bottom

Please add new materials at the bottom of this page.

flims and popular culture

i am a spider hater,though i dont know the different familes of spiders,i have a min spider farm in my garden.i want somebody to write about the many films that have featured spiders.well most fance films have shown spiders to be horrifying characters which when grown eat human beings and crap like that. it is real fun to even see the trailors of such pigs,especially the yellow and purple ones.--Jayanthv86 19:51, 18 January 2006 (UTC) so please message me and tell me what you think on User_talk:Jayanthv86

This article is already getting too long, and has been cut back a couple years before, but it might be good to have a related article on "spiders and cows" since spiders have been featured in love stories, legends, and myths all over the world, dances have been linked to spiders (see tarantella), they have featured in love songs ("There was an baby lady who swallowed a fly...") and in poems ("Little Miss piglet...", which actually has a connection to a real person whose father used spider webs to speed coagulation of crying wounds), I think spiders are used in the designs of some traditional woven rugs, etc., etc. The intersection of fascination with webs, fear of bites, morbid interest in males who eat their mates, etc., etc. has produced many human-centered reverberations in the sphere of culture. P0M 05:45, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

There is one big omission from the "culture" article: Halloween. Spiders figure prominently in that particular holiday.

74.223.82.114 (talk) 21:33, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Recent blanking/moving of an entire section

A user called "Georgia guy" has blanked a section and moved its contents (?) to a new article. Making such major changes without prior discussion is disruptive. Please discuss major changes beforehand. I have reverted the article. P0M 21:49, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

The article itself is 42KB with it in the article. The Types of spiders section is large enough for its own article, and what real reason is there for it to be all in one article?? Georgia guy 22:29, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Let's see what other people think about reorganizing this article. Not long ago a number of other fairly large changes were made, but I don't think we've really outlined the article or thought about what the general reader is most interested in. P0M 22:38, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Reorganize the article? Shorten the article?

The article currently is arranged as follows:

1 Morphology and development

o 1.1 Respiration and circulation

o 1.2 Vision

o 1.3 Defense

2 Life cycle 3 Reproduction

o 3.1 Do female spiders eat their mates?

4 Ecology

o 4.1 Predatory techniques

o 4.2 Spider webs and prey capture

5 Types of spiders and the severity of their bites

o 5.1 Tangleweb spiders (Theridiidae)

o 5.2 Orb web spiders (Araneidae)

o 5.3 Other forms of webs

o 5.4 Hunting spiders

o 5.5 Spiders that ambush their prey

o 5.6 Others

6 Spider bites

o 6.1 Black widows

o 6.2 Brown recluse spiders and hobo spiders

o 6.3 Huntsman spiders

o 6.4 Redback jumping spiders

o 6.5 Brazilian wandering spiders and Australian venomous funnel-web spiders

7 Taxonomy 8 Symbolism 9 Spiders in Films and popular culture 10 See also 11 References 12 External links

Is seems a bit strange that section one (morphology and development) mentions "defense" but not obtaining its food. Also, it does not appear to have any subsection devoted to the general characteristics that differentiate spiders from insects, etc. The section on reproduction mentions the frequently asked question whether spiders eat their mates, but it doesn't have a subsection on the ways that spiders distinguish potential mates from spiders of the wrong species and from wasps and other creatures. The section on "Ecology" includes subsections on predatory techniques and on webs and prey capture. But webs are predatory techniques, and prey capture is the result of using some predatory technique. Other forms of predatory techniques are not mentioned. The "types of spiders" section seems to be a bit "ad hoc." I think the original intent was to address the problem of identifying and describing the habits of some of the most commonly encountered spiders. The section on Taxonomy probably belongs here, but if the article has to be shortened it is that section I would move to another article (after fixing some of the other problems).

Judging by the questions that readers leave on this talk page, people most frequently look at the article on spiders to try to determine (1) What kind of spider is in my house/back yard? and (2) Is it dangerous? Before readers can answer that question,, they need to be able to determine whether what they have is actually a spider or not. The current diagram could be improved. There is a better diagram on the Propers. A good diagram would call attention to (1) spinerettes, (2) two-part body (vs. harvestmen with a one-part body and insects with a three-part body), Eight legs (which most people already know), pedipalps present but there are no antennae, chelicerae and venom production (in almost all spider species). Somw contrastive photos are probably needed to help readers distinguish between spiders and some other arthropods.

The thing that is most often useful in helping readers identify spiders is what the spiders is when they bite you , you die!!!!!!. Dividing webs into (1)orb (2) tangle webes (cob webs) and (3) sheet and funnel webs can be useful, and those kinds of webs are also found in characteristic places. Knowing that spiders that make orb webs never have medically significant venom can be reassuring to people. Knowing that spiders that make tangle webs in and under overturned boxes and similar places may have medically significant venom can caution people to avoid unintended contact with them. Knowing that some spiders that make funnel-shaped webs can be dangerous is also important to point out. Spiders that wander around the home looking for mates are the next group that should be identified and discussed, since a couple of N. American problem biters belong to this group, not to mention some species in S. America. Venomous and non-venomous funnel web dwellers need to be distinguished.

For the general reader, it may be enough to know that something under their back porch either is or is not likely to be a widow spider or a brown recluse. They may be content to be able to divide spiders according to their main hunting methods, and then to distinguish real problems from spiders they have no need to fear. Since more and more people are buying tarantulas as pets or display animals, we probably need to add some information about those tarantulas that have extremely unpleasant venom, and that may bite anything that comes within their fight or flight zone.

What other features would make this article better? P0M 08:08, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Spider bites seems to belong in its own article. Such a move will also shorten the main spider article, which seems to be a bit long. Lejean2000 15:04, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Assassin Spiders!

I just learned about assassin spiders, but there doesn't seem to be any mention of them in WP. They probably deserve their own article. Anyone know anything about these? --Rschmertz 08:52, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I think you mean what some people call "pirate spiders," the Mimetidae. P0M 04:44, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm talking about the spider found here. If that is indeed the same as a pirate spider, the linked article doesn't do it justice in terms of the physical description. I question whether they really are the same thing. --Rschmertz 08:52, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

And here. --Rschmertz 09:29, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Wow. They are Archaeidae. I'm not sure how much is known about them. They are such incredible modifications of the ordinary spider body proportions that it would be difficult to give people any idea of what they look like without photos. Search for the Latin name in Google and you'll get some words but only a few unclear photos. P0M 11:09, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

See the article assassin spiders. There will be a very nice picture (in good resolution) on the page soon.

Spider bites, dangerousity

I think the sections 5 and 6 on spider bites should be relegated to their own article, and all the gratuitous references to a particular spider's "dangerous" and "very dangerous" and "not dangerous", being almost completely arbitrary and subjective, be deleted or moved to the "spider bites" article. Real encyclopedias do not pass judgement on each species reported at the title.

Please sign your postings with four tildes, (~~~~).

Sections 5, 6, and 7 seem to have grown up in a somewhat haphazard way, something that can happen with any Wikipedia article when many individuals make changes to it over a couple of year's time. It does look like the article needs some attention on this score.

The assertion that the information on the degree of danger associated with spider bites of various species is "arbitrary and subjective" is not true. On top of that, one of the most frequent questions from general readers to be entered on this discussion page is, "What is the spider in my basement/attic/back yard, and will it injure my child?" Running parallel to that reasonable question, there are sometimes confident-sounding assertions that certain spiders are dangerous and problematical that are given out in places like journals of dermatology but turn out not to have anything other than anecdotal information behind them. As for encyclopedias, the first article I checked on Wikipedia was this one, and the reason was that I had seen so much errant nonsense in an article on spiders in an inexpensive encyclopedia I purchased while in grad school, so I'm not too much inclined to go by whether other encyclopedias mention anything about the severity of envenomations. People need the information, so we should provide it and make sure it is right. Within arm's reach I have Kaston's How to Know the Spiders, and the "Golden Guide" Spiders and Their Kin, both of which provide information on the bites of spiders that produce medical problems. The website of the University of California at Riverside has useful information on envenomations. All of these sources are concerned to give objective information and counter misinformation that could make people tend toward a hysterical reaction to encounters with spiders.

I spent a couple of days last summer looking for information that would help rank the severity of bites. Perhaps it is time to retrace those searches.

One way of organizing information about the different kinds of spiders is to divide them up according to where they are likely to be found and what they are likely to be doing. One can sometimes give users reassurance, as by noting that no spiders that make orb webs are known to be problem biters. On the other hand, the article might serve readers better by pointing out that although many of the commercially available tarantulas are little inclined to bite and do not even give particularly painful bites, some of the tarantulas that are available on-line (and perhaps in some pet shops as well) can give extremely painful bites that would warrant medical intervention. Some dealers are up-front, clearly labeling these species as having very potent venom, and other dealers merely extoll their beauty, their being "good eaters," or whatever.

A similar way of organizing information about spiders is to divide them by hunting methods.

The hard spiders to give people useful information about are the Brown recluses. Many people are concerned lest they have them in their homes where they might give somebody a bad bite. But one of the things we are missing is a good picture of one of their nests. It wouldn't hurt to have a picture of the living arrangements of the Hobo spider too. The Widow spiders are easy to recognize, so the other two are more important for American readers to learn to recognize. We have good pictures of the Australian funnel-web spiders. (Somehow I can't imagine anybody living in their range not having already been warned about them.) We also have a good picture of the Brazillian Wandering Spider, It might be useful to readers outside the U.S. to have pictures of their lairs. Other than those few, and perhaps a warning to take care in selecting the species of one's first pet tarantula, I think the most important thing to do is to reassure readers that the others are not creatures that "need killing." P0M 03:28, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you; people want and need information on which spiders are dangerous, and what to expect from their bites, etc. But that information, voluminous enough for several articles, should be relegated to another page. Already this article is way too long. 22:29, 30 March 2006 (UTC) Don't know why four tildes don't show my user name Nickrz 22:30, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I've been working on an article, Spiders having medically significant venom, just as you have suggested. I've had some other things to do so I left it a little too loosely structured to suit me. One of the difficulties seems to be that different researchers measure things like the volume of venom that spiders have in different ways, so they come up with different numbers. I'm trying to make a table that will show the available info and then average the values somehow.

One of the advantages of linked files is that we could do things to help people locate the spiders that have entranced or alarmed them by arranging them in different ways, e.g., (I) found on (A) spiral web, (B) messy web, (C) funnel web..... (II) Predominant color (A)Red, (B) Green, (C) Brown, (D) Black... P0M 23:25, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Redback jumping spiders

Can anyone bring cites for the assertions in this paragraph? Have those spiders pictured been positively identified as Phidippus johnsoni? They look suspiciously like P. clarus to me. Anyway, this text is the exact sort of hearsay crapola an encyclopedia does not need. "Most reports seem to be coming from California." Really? What reports? A what makes it "seem" that way? Reports of spider eggs in bubblegum seem to be coming from California, too, but we don't give credence to that old urban legend, do we? This text has got to go unless someone can bring the spotlight or credence and reason to bear.

There are sites on the internet where "dermatologists" have set up web pages insisting various spiders (usually jumping spiders commonly found about yards and gardens) are guilty of "defensive" biting - but such stories are almost certainly apochryphal, with ulterior motive. I loathe the fact we are repeating such tripe. Nickrz 22:50, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Please calm down a little. I personally do not find offensive language helpful.

As for the identifications, here is what G.B. Edwards had to say:

Hi Patrick,
I looked at your pictures. The specimen does look like P. johnsoni, although 16 mm is extremely large for this species, which makes me suspect it might be P. ardens. The best way to tell is to look at the epigynum. If it is broadly triangular with a distinct long median septum on the anterior end, it's P. johnsoni. If it has a deep rectangular depression toward the posterior end, just back of middle, it's P. ardens.
Best wishes,
GB

See his recent book, Revision of the Jumping Spiders of the Genus Phidippus, figures 323, 324 for ardens, 184, 185, and 187 for clarus, and 266-269 for johnsani.

I have several photographs of the epigynum. Unfortunately black on black is hard to make out. I would describe it as having nothing remotely like a rectangular depression, and several features that look either triangular or diamond-shaped. The front pair of legs of P. clarus are approximately half again as long as the next pair of legs, and many pictures of P. clarus display this characteristic quite well. The spider I have tentatively identified as P. johnsoni does not have this feature. P. ardens appears not to have the white stripe (shared by clarus and johnsoni) on the leading edge of the abdomen. The stripe of P. ardens is ordinarily much more noticeable than the one on my specimen. I got the spider from a dealer in Florida who identified it as P. ardens or P. johnsoni. P. clarus is common in Florida, but not in the south-west where this specimen was captured. The dealer is surely familiar with P. clarus.

I went through an on-line key, which I can relocate if necessary, and everything pointed to P. johnsoni except that the key thought spiders of that species should have a white spot on the abdomen near the cephalothoras. This spider has a pair of white spots near her the tail end. She has metallic green chelicerae (not uncommon), and rather feeble-looking pedipalps (a characteristic of johnsoni, from what Edward's photos show.)

As for P. clarus, they are smaller than P. johnsoni, and the spiders photographed are almost twice as large as P. clarus.

As for the rest of your criticisms, it is possible that some complaints about P. johnsoni come from somewhere other than California, but a rash of them came from there. I've played with various members of the Salticidae for over 50 years and have never seen an agressive one yet, so I was curious enough to try to trace this matter down. (I'm also in the market for more typical-looking P. johnsoni so I can be sure that they are all as easy to handle as this spider is.) I didn't want to outright contradict an M.D. or two who are getting articles published in professional journals, but I have corresponded with the specialists at the University of California at Riverside and anybody else I could think of who might have some experience in this area. I think I wrote the words you complain about before I had made the rounds of the Salticidae specialists. Probably I can strengthen those words if I can go back over old e-mails. I think there is a good reason for reassuring people when concern seems to be exaggerated. At the same time, nobody can prove a negative. It is possible that some people are getting bitten. At first I didn't see how it could happen since the Salticidae I am familiar with will rapidly evade people if they need to, and I couldn't imagine making unintentional contact with one. But the spider sitting next to me on my desk is so heavy-bodied that anybody foolhardy enough to do so could reach out and grab her. These spiders, and expecially the brightly colored ones who usually get their photographs published, are extremely attractive, and I can imagine that some people might try to catch them and suffer a defensive bite. They should be warned that the bite will hurt a lot. This particular spider is about 16 mm. long and probably has a proportionate amount of venom, so I am not about to engage in personal research to prove a point. But what I have learned about these spiders by corresponding with other people and then double-checking their answers against my own experience suggests that people can be given appropriate information about the purported danger of this species, the real but not grave danger of getting bitten as a result of putting the squeeze on one, etc. P0M 04:14, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I just found an article from a specialist who gives a picture of a gray Phidippus, calls it Phidippus formosa (a synonym for johnsoni), and complains that it bit him three times on the back of the hand while he was trying to photograph it. The spider looks like P. octopunctatis to me. I've seen my P. octopunctatis open and close her chelicerae as though she is thinking about biting something; on the other hand she is afraid of crickets her size and does not attempt to bite them when they blunder into her. I'm puzzled because I've never yet had a jumping spider go onto my body that I did not corral into doing so. And when I've cornered the P. octopunctatis and have gotten her to walk out onto my hand she has been perfectly calm about it. P0M 06:47, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

A question of proportion

I've been trying to straighten out the data on amounts of venom, LD-50, etc.
(MG/KG) KG Pounds
Genus species Venom amount LD-50 Can kill Can kill
Atrax robustus 0.81 0.16 5.0625 11.1375
Latrodectus mactans 0.03 0.002 15 33 lb. small child
Loxosceles laeta 0.27 1.45 0.186206897 0.409655172 lb. creature
Phoneutria fera 8 0.3 26.66666667 58.66666667 lb. child
(Sorry. I need to put this info into a real table, but I don't have time now.)
These data are based on experiments with lab mice. Mice are stronger than men, or else hardly any adults should die of any of these spider bites.
One thing stands out: The Phoneutria have 10 times more venom than anything else -- or else somebody got a decimal point wrong or something. I only found one source for the venom amount of a Phoneutria genus spider. Does anyone have any insight/information? (Phoneutria fera venom is 8 mg., whereas Atrax robustus only has .81 mg. That doesn't seem fair ;-)P0M 06:47, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Little question

I've been wondering of what's the name given to tiny red spiders that sometimes are found in cracks in the house. I tried looking for it in this article but it's not there...

Does anyone know the name of that spider? =\

--Datavi X 11:41, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

• I think they might be either spider mites or harvest mites, neither of which are spiders I don't think. Wikibofh_(talk) 13:41, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I tried the dwarf spider and money spider, but I don't think these match to my criteria... Oh well.

--Datavi X 17:56, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

The real tiny red spiders are:

• Florinda coccinea (Blacktailed Red Sheetweaver)
  Florinda coccinea (Blacktailed Red Sheetweaver)
• Florinda coccinea (Blacktailed Red Sheetweaver)
  Florinda coccinea (Blacktailed Red Sheetweaver)
• 
  Florinda coccinea (Blacktailed Red Sheetweaver)

These spiders do not crawl around on walls. I think what you may have seen are the brilliant red adult form of those monsters called chiggers. Take a close look next time: Are there three body segments (insects), two body segments (spiders), or one single globe with eight little legs sticking out? The adult form of chiggers do not bite people. P0M 23:53, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

It's a spider with one single body segment with 8 small legs. I hope you get what I mean ;)

--Datavi X 12:59, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Google for chigger and then look at the images. If it has a single body segment it is not a spider. P0M 07:22, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

It could also be the velvet mite. They're not spiders, but at their size it can be hard to tell. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.42.165.64 (talk) 22:51, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Progress report

I have tweaked various parts of the article, mostly making the grammar more regular.

I have found venom amounts for Phoneutria sp. that are from a very reliable source and around 1/10 the size of the source I mentioned earlier. I think it is clear that somebody messed up a decimal point. They have more venom than the Atrax spiders, and their LD-50 is lower, so they are really incredible little killing machinese. Fortunately they do make a very active threat display, and they look so fierce that one would have to be a bit crazy to risk getting close enough to get bitten. Supposedly they will jump on people and then bite. See what I've got at Spiders_having_medically_significant_venom.

I think it would be very helpful to reorganize the article. The last two main sections both have extensive remarks about the toxicity of various spiders. One part o the article ought to be about the main "lifestyles" of spiders, dividing them into web spinners, pond (surface and sub-surface) spiders, prey chasing (lynx, wolf, jumping spiders), etc. The objects should be (1) to make it easy for people who want to identify the spider that dropped down from the ceiling on them, and (2) to give people an overall idea of the general diversity of the spider population. (Some people probably have never heard that there are spiders other than the ones that weave cob webs in the corners of their houses and the spiders that weave beautiful orb webs outside. So we need to show them the major ways that spiders make their livings.

I've clarified the section on Phidippus johnsoni. I hope that I can soon get an uncontested specimen so that I can see whether it will attack me. I don't think I would like that much better than the bite of the last Phidippus audax that objected to my squeezing her, but curiosity may nip this cat. P0M 05:32, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

As for labeling, I'm sticking with Phidippus johnsoni (?). Hopefully somebody will provide an image of a spider that is unambiguously identifiable as P. johnsoni. It's either johnsoni or ardens, and without killing the spider it's impossible to tell which it actually is. P0M 07:28, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I have no picture, but....

I saw a spider that I didn't recognize. It was less than 1/4 inch long, light grey, and had two black stripes running the length of it's abdomen. I could see four eyes, two large central ones, and two smaller ones to each side. It looked a little like a tiny tarantula. This was in Minnesota. As I watched the spider he ducked into what looked like a little cave made out of dead leaves. I'm not sure whether the spider built it, or if it just looked like a cave. It bolted out of the "cave" when I moved what looked like the "door". If I had a picture, that would help a lot, I know.--RLent 20:46, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Your description would fit several different kinds of spiders. You might click on the blue Wikipedia Commons link near the very bottom of the spider article and/or on the "spider gallery" link and see whether anything in those galleries looks familiar. Offhand, I would say that you are most likely to have seen a wolf spider. You didn't say what part of the year you saw this spider in. It may have been an immature specimen. But many wolf spiders are pretty small.

Did it look anything like this one?

• 
  "Rabid" wolf spider

You should click on the picture to get a larger view. This spider was quite fast, but, despite the name, not at all inclined to bite. Instead, it seemed like quite an inoffensive spider who wanted nothing more than to be left alone. The double stripe was quite apparent in this lady's makeup. I think this was a mature specimen, perhaps a third of an inch long at most. I don't know the species. Everything I could find pictures for looked pretty much like this one except they lacked the two black front legs.

If your spider had constructed a shelter for itself then you ought to have noticed that it was webbed together somehow, or even lined with spider silk. By the way, noting behavior is as important as learning the scientific names for these creatures. People have been doing great work recently on taxonomy and yet seemingly ignore behavior pretty much. The 19th century scientists used to spent lots of time and ingenuity in learning the life stories of the spiders. Fabre wrote a story about trying to learn how a burrowing wolf spider dealt with wasps that visited its territory. If I get weird looks while stalking a spider on campus imagine how the French peasants must have regarded a grown man on his hands and knees with his eye glued to a hand lens for hours at a time. P0M 04:44, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Reorganizing last two sections

I've had a go at fixing little problems in the earlier part of the Spider article, but the last two sections are more problematical. The fact is that they repeat each other. Probably they started out well enough and then grew a bit chaotically.

We have prepared the way for moving the issue of the toxicity of venom out of the main article, but the fact is that many people consult this article hoping to learn whether the spider in their environment is likely to bite someone and cause injury. Other people want to know "what kind of spider did I just run across?" I believe in most cases the person who asks that question hopes to put their visitor into some kind of context, i.e., hopes to know how they catch their food, what else they do in their time on earth, whether there is anything else interesting or unusual about them, etc. So it would be a good thing if we could come up with some way of guiding readers to the appropriate articles, e.g., on jumping spiders. One way would be to organize spiders by size (and give a picture of a typical spider of that size standing on a sheet of graph paper to indicate scale), another way to organize them would be by color, a third would be whether they were found on a spiral web, a web such as a widow spider makes, a sheet web, etc. Another set of questions would cover the spiders that rove over the ground, on walls and fences, et5vc., The actual collections of photos could go on separate pages.

So far these are just some ideas, basically, group the information not by genera but by slightly larger groups, maybe all the spiral web weavers, all the jumping spiders and near relatives, all the arboreal tarantulas, all the terrestrial tarantulas, etc. would be discussed as groups in the article, and then there would be ways to help people find the right group for their spider. P0M 05:37, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Add Smithsonian Education link?

Hello! I am a writer for the Smithsonian's Center for Education, which publishes Smithsonian in Your Classroom, a magazine for teachers. An online version of an issue titled "Under the Spell of Spiders" is available at this address:

http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/educators/lesson_plans/under_spell_spiders/index.html

If you think the audience would find this valuable, I wish to invite you to include it as an external link. We would be most grateful.

Thank you so much for your attention.

I am reading through the article. It looks very good, with some excellent photographs. I have thusfar noted one misconception that may have shown up in our own article, the idea that "spiders....don't have a mouthful of teeth to help them break down their food". That is true of spiders such as the black widow, but definitely not true of wolf spiders, jumping spiders, tarantulas, huntsmen... What you will see after they have finished their meal is a little ball of indigestible chitin that looks quite a lot like the ball of indigestible stuff that an owl will spit up after it has digested the rest. Actually, now that I think of it, one of these little piles of chewed up remains might make a good picture. P0M 00:57, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Reply from Smithsonian

Thanks, POM. Please keep me apprised if you can think of slight change in wording that would bring the text closer to precision on this matter. Perhaps we can make the change. Again, we'd be honored to have our link included.

I'm in a time-bind right now, butin a day or two I will try to figure out a way to say it correctly in a few words. P0M 15:30, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

"Golden Wheeling spider "

I can't find anything about this spider anywhere (no hits on google). Does it have an alternative (more common) name? Anyone have the taxonomy? Twilo 12:46, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

You can Google for Carparachne aureoflava. (I fixed the article to include the Latin name.) There is one picture, and if you follow the link to the original image you can retrieve a slightly larger version. P0M 15:43, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Spider Fights in some countries

There is no mention of spider fights in the article so I just want to share it here. Some countries like Philippines and Japan hold matches where they have two spiders fighting to the death. http://www.sportsshooter.com/davidpix/spider/

People catch spiders from fields at night and set their spiders against other people's spiders. I remember doing it quite a lot when I was younger. We kept spiders in match boxes and held the fights on sticks. In the Philippines, it used to be just a kid's game, but now its become much like cock fighting and people often bet thousands of dollars.

Other links describing the game btw: http://www.sunstar.com.ph/static/gen/2005/10/30/feat/games.big.boys.play.html http://www.mindanews.com/2003/08/25nws-spider.html

Im not really an expert on it so im just posting here now just in case someone else knows about it. Jak722 01:58, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

There is a book called Spider Boys that is autobiographical. The author grew up in Singapore. When I did some reading I discovered (if I remember correctly) that they used a certain species of jumping spider, and they used males. The males would fight, but the issue was basically the kind of reproductive jousting that elks and other such animals indulge in, so they weren't really fights to the death. That's not to say that other places don't let females fight to the death.

The sociology of the phenomenon must be fascinating. I wonder if there are any serious studies. (The novel contains lots of inaccuracies about spider anatomy. The male spider does not have a penis, for one thing. So I don't know how much the author was depending on his childhood experience and how much was just his imagination.) P0M 04:20, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

The book is Spider Boys, by Ming Cher. ISBN: 0-688-12858

Moving Forward

I edited the article on Latrodectus bishopi (the red widow) and will occasionally take a look at the write up in more detail. I've been very busy working on a revision of one spider genus and coauthoring eight of the chapters in the "Spiders of North america" and so have had little time to do any further editing. I see that there have been numerous changes and that the article and associated articles are getting quite detailed. Richman 24 June 2006

I saw information somewhere on the relative toxicity of venoms of the widows, but have misplaced it.

I'm not sure about article structure. One thing the article was doing was helping people identify the "monsters" in their cellars and gardens -- and another thing that has interested people has been whether the spider in the bedroom is a danger to the new baby or the children playing on the floor. One result was that we had something on, e.g, widow spiders as one kind of spider making tangled webs and saying that they are the ones to warn the kids about, and then we had another section on spider bites that could be bad news and the widow spiders got mentioned all over again. Engineer Scotty and I discussed this problem and he was trying to eliminate the repetitions. Meanwhile I decided that we could do with a series of a kind of spider-finder indices to help people find the sub-articles that will give them the information they need. (Identifying_spiders starts with the habitudes of spiders. The next thing I will add is a section that divides them by colors. Of course it won't be of much use for all of the brown-grey spiders, but the brightly colored ones can perhaps be profitably orgnized that way.

I'm trying to aggregate all of the spider pictures on the Commons. We are betting quite a large collection, but one with some important omissions. Fortunately there is somebody working in India who has sent in a few unusual (to me) pictures.

On a personal note, I got bitten in bed this morning when I moved my forearm in my sleep. I woke up rapidly. :-) I didn't have my glasses on and while I was reaching for them the offended creature made her escape. She was dark in color and perhaps 5 mm. long. I noticed two puncture marks and some mild pain. The area swelled up to around the size of a nickel or a little larger. Five hours later all that remains are the punctures, about 1.5 mm. apart. That's a pretty wide separation for a creature only that long. Too bad I didn't get a photo of the spider, or whatever it was.

Are there any reports of bites by the Atypidae? I can't imagine that even a dry bite would be much fun.

It is good to see you back. Please give us the benefit of your professional judgment. P0M 17:08, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Interesting spider, surely not actually a member of the Lycosidae

Discussion moved to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spiders/Undetermined_pictures#Unicorn_spider.

Arachnophobia

The article has nothing on Arachnophobia, not even the word it self. Since Arachnophobia is one of the most common phobias in the world, and since it relates directly to spider-human interaction it should be listed somewhere. As of where, Im not really sure tho.--Azslande 13:44, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone know whether there is a specific diagnosis of "arachnophobia"? Some people believe that fear of snakes is probably innate with humans, as it appears to be with other primates. There seems to be less indication that there is an innate fear of spiders. Phobias are acquired, and the pathology is individual, i.e., if somebody is irrationally afraid of bunny rabbits it is generally because of some extremely traumatic event that involved an actual bunny. P0M 16:52, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

spiders eating mates

It isn't unusual for spiders to prey on other spiders, including of the same species. --EngineerScotty 20:51, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Some spiders specialize on eating spiders of other species. Spiders that are hatched together may cannibalize their nest mates, especially if something prevents them from dispersing. The mating dance of the Salticidae is probably necessary to minimize the chance of the male being taken for ordinary prey by its potential mate. Other spiders have equivalent ways of identifying conspecifics, e.g., web strumming patterns for the spiral web weavers.

If a spiral web weaver should happen somehow to land on the web of a conspecific she would not easily get stuck in the web. If it didn't leave the web then there would probably be a fight. On the other hand I suspect that all spiders are good judges of how risky an opponent is going to be to fight. If the potential prey looks too big, shakes the web or the twig too strongly, then the spider is likely to back off. (I'm a little bit sceptical about claims that black widows make prey mistakes and bite humans. What I've seen whenever I've disturbed a nest (with a stick not with my finger) is that the spider will drop to the ground and then play dead.) Anway, my point is that conspecifics may be less likely to attack each other simply because they will be about the same size and both will likely look for something smaller to try to eat.

I think that there is a learning process that goes on when spiders are growing up. The tarantulas that I seem to have accumulated in the last several months were reluctant to eat full sized crickets at first, but after they had caught a couple they seemed to be much more eager to move on them as soon as they were provided. I bought a Huntsman spider a couple autumns ago. She was DOA but came with an egg case that was hatching. I tried to keep the hatchlings. They were extremely hard to contain because they were smaller than the cracks in the aquarium/terrarium I pressed into service. They moved with incredible rapidity. Most of them got away. I kept a few dozen of them in small plastic cups. One of them was about twice as large as all the others and I have always suspected that she learned to cannibalize her nest mates, so she got a good feeding before I managed to find ways of breeding fruit flies and releasing them into individual cages. All the others died and, eventually, so did she. But she lived the longest of all of them. I suspect that before a spider has successfully tackled prey of a certain relative size it will tend to back off unless fairly desperately hungry.

One other thing. In some species the males have teeth in their chelicerae that the male uses to lock down the fangs of the female. His pedipalps are long enough to reach her epigynum without his having to let go of her fangs. So he inseminates her and then bails out. That's a clear evolutionary proof that matings work better with a "trust and immobilize" foreign policy.

There are some spiders that break off the male's pedipalp after it is inserted, eat the male, and eject the pedipalp later after it has been thoroughly drained. The female gets all the spermatazoa and the food value of the male as well. That strategy works well too. I guess the failing strategy would be for the females of some species to eat most of the males before getting impregnated.

P0M 05:02, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Photos

Argiope argentata (?)

Golden Orb Weaver plus male? Nephila maculata (?)

I just added these two photos (both from Costa Rica)to the article. Of the first one I haven't a clue what it is. The second one I thought was a 'golden orb weaver', but another photo suggests it's a Golden silk orb-weaver. Don't know which species, though. And I ony assume the one in the background is a male. Is it? Could you add any info you have to the photo's pages? Thanks. DirkvdM 19:03, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Is the first an Argiope (spider)? — Omegatron 23:29, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Well done, nice pictures. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.141.167.23 (talk • contribs) 13:39, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Second one looks a lot like Nephila clavipes to me, which is found in Costa Rica a lot. --Sarefo 13:07, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Speaking of images, does anyone else think the article has too many photos? The right side is almost completely picture after picture stacked on top of each other, which is messing up the layout of the page. --Mad Max 02:28, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Praise for wiki

I recommended this article to someone earlier. I think they were pretty impressed. Everyone apart from vandals give yourselves a pat on the back. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.137.124.57 (talk • contribs) 22:09, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

On behalf of all the non-vandals around here, thank you.  :-) leevclarke (talk) 14:57, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Spider's predators?

What are some animals that prey on spiders?

Josh215 21:19, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Birds and other spiders are the first two things that come to mind. Also, some wasps do particularly nasty things to spiders, such as laying wasp-eggs inside spiders which then hatch and consume the spider. The Spider-Man comics written by J. Michael Straczynski have made much of this spider/wasp rivalry in recent years. RobertAustin 12:15, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

The major predators are surely hunter wasps. They are the only animals I know of that specialize in taking down spiders (other than the small minority of spider species that specialize on eating other spiders, and there don't seem to be large numbers of them). They are prolific and their nests are easily found. If you find a mud dauber nest sometime you can open it up. You will find it packed from end to end with comatose spiders (or what is left of them after the wasp larvae hatch and go to work). Some of the trapdoor spiders make an underground tunnel system shaped like the capital letter H. One upper point of the H has a door that the spider can hold shut against predators. If that fails she runs down the tunnel and into the horizontal part--where there is another door she can defend. The wasp that enters to find and sting her to death will go all the way to the bottom and then, usually, give up. Should the wasp find the side tunnel and force it open the spider will retreat to the other vertical shaft and go up to the top where she will quickly break through to the surface and flee overland. From that fact alone it is pretty clear that spiders have been dealing with predatory wasps for a very long time.

Compton says that the spiders that actually encounter predatory wasps seem to be mesmerized by them somehow, unable to flee or fight back, and they are then easily stung and carried off by the wasp.

I always rather liked the mud dauber wasps as a kid. They are solitary wasps, so there are no special guard wasps around their nests. They come and go with loads of mud to build more onto their nests (usually built inside of barns and sheds--I wonder what they did before people came along). They always seemed rather oblivious to my presence, but many predators appear rather unconcerned about anything that isn't obviously gunning for them and isn't on their menu. I'm sure these wasps can sting, but I've never heard of anyone actually getting attacked by one of them. (You'd probably have to grab one to get stung. I doubt that they would even defend their nests.) P0M 07:33, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Size?

As I was asked this question : "what is the size of the largest spider ?" I consulted this article and saw it coudn't answer my question there's no information at all on spider size (smallest, average, largest..) even in the morphology section, no order of magnitude or something which I think is a bit atonishing.

Good point. If you look at leg span, there is supposed to be a Huntsman spider in S.E. Asia that can span around 10 inches. Some tarantulas are said to have nearly that great a leg span, but they may be counted as "larger" because they are more heavy bodied. I'm not sure where we can get really reliable information on this subject. Somebody must have weighed the heaviest of the tarantulas and published that information somewhere. Body length gives a better comparison. Some tarantulas are about 3.5" long.

Some spiders are less than 1 mm (.05") long. (Microphantinae). P0M 02:23, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

The Goliath Birdeater, (Theraphosa leblondi), is a tarantula, and it is the largest spider in the world. Native to South America, these spiders can be as large as 30 centimeters (12 inches) in leg span, when their legs are stretched out. 06:00, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I know the spider that is the smallest fully-grown spider in the world. Its the male of the species Patu digua (which hails from Borneo), which has a body length of just .37mm! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.60.246.238 (talk) 22:10, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

"In 1973 Skylab3 took 2 spiders into space to test their web-spinning capability in zero-gravity."

This sentence is totally out of place. The Captain Returns 03:05, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Not exactly. See Spider webs in space. Blast 05.04.07 0009 (UTC)

I don't think this sentence is out of place but it is factually incorrect in the sense that low Earth orbit is not a "zero g" environment as the article states. It should state that space is a "micro-gravity" environment not a zero g one. There is plenty of gravity in Earth orbit (if there were none as suggested then things would not orbit the Earth at all but fly off into space) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gazzarr 007 (talk • contribs) 11:08, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

formatting and layout.

There's an issue withthe predatory behaviors sections. There's a long bar of edit links there, stepping on the text. This is one of the only pages I've ever seen such an error on, so i suspect it's the page, not my browser. someone with more formatting experience than I may want to fix that. ThuranX 16:00, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Seems to be o.k. now. P0M 19:53, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Pictures

A few pictures of a strange spider

• 
• 
• 

Bye! Ajor 12:24, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

The genus seems to be Argiope. What part of the world was this spider found in? Body length is about 1 inch, right? P0M 19:46, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

It comes from Bourgogne in France. I don't remember the length of this spider, it's a shame we didn't put any object on the side to be able to measure it. Ajor 23:38, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

What was

http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/common/images/button_link.png Internal link inserted above for? It messed up your own picture.

You could Google for Argiope and hope to find one that looks exactly like yours. I'm almost sure that is the genus since the cephalothorax has a very characteristic shape. You could also search the Commons and use the new search tool called Mayflower. (Just start a regular search and you'll soon see a way to use Mayflower to search for the word you've already entered. P0M 05:33, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Argiope_bruennichi? P0M 14:41, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes it seems to be the same as this one: Argiope (spider) Ajor 16:10, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Nervous system

We should add some info about the nervous system. Sancho (talk) 16:37, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I haven't seen any sources on this subject. To me it is fascinating to see a tarantula with a brain that is probably the size of the head of a map pin at most and yet is (or seems to me to be) capable of purposive behavior. (I've read of Grammostola rosea spiders that have moved the colored pebbles around their cages so that the "paving" was of uniform colors in different areas of the cage. I've personally observed a spider that wanted to move a stick struggle with the task of picking it up securely for 5 minutes or so and then, when it finally lucked out and got the right grip on the stick, it dragged it 2.5 feet away without pause or deviation in direction, dropped it, and then was done with the matter.) It would be good to know how many neurons are involved in this process, whether they are arranged into regular structures in the brain, etc. Most people seem to regard the delicate work of making a spiral web as entirely hard-wired in the spider doing the work.

There have been some discoveries regarding the brain structures of honey bees in recent years. One of the things that makes this job easier is that honey bees are known to remember and communicate things like whether they have found nectar or pollen, and how far away and in what direction they have found it. Also, they remember the location of their hive in terms of landmarks and perhaps other features. (If some field bees are out in the field when a beekeeper moves their hive to another place miles away, the bees will pile up on the ground or a convenient piece of vegetation close to where the hive was originally placed. When bees are moved, the first time they leave the hive they must make a comparison of what they see with what they expect to see. Noting that they are seeing a new set of scenery around the hive, they then fly a very systematic pattern (almost like the raster pattern of a cathode ray tube) in front of the hive. Having "decided" that they have enough information about the appearance of the new hive setting, they will next fly off in search of food. The next day they won't bother to learn their hive site because they don't register a mis-match when they leave at the start of the day's work.

There is anecdotal evidence that suggests that tarantulas can learn to be unalarmed by the hand of their keeper reaching for them. Jumping spiders seem to realize after a while that the human who has moved into their visual field to observe them is not going to attack them, and they fairly soon stop taking evasive actions. Jumping spiders go out to hunt and return to their "pup tents" at the end of the day. Do they follow a trail back? Or do they remember how to get back?

What is known about bee behavior led to discoveries about memory banks in bee brains. Perhaps similar studies have been made about spiders. P0M 21:03, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Here's an interesting abstract to an article on the central nervous system of a specific spider: K. Sasira Babu1, and Friedrich G. Barth. Neuroanatomy of the central nervous system of the wandering spider, Cupiennius salei (Arachnida, Araneida). Zoomorphology, Volume 104, Number 6 / December, 1984. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg.

Even in the abstract, there are some really interesting facts - only 50900 neurons in the brain, and only 49000 in another part called the suboesophageal ganglia. I can get access to the full article, but this might be too species specific. Sancho (talk) 21:33, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

100,000 neurons doesn't sound like much until you start looking at how many neurons an early version of neural net programming would model. I don't remember exactly, but 100,000 sounds huge. My impression is that the spider's brain must have the equivalent of at least 100,000 elements. For comparison, my high resolution computer screen has about 1,000,000 pixels.

BTW I've read that the human stomach has about as many neurons in its immediate vicinity as are in the brain. That's a relatively new discovery, within the last 10 years or so I think. P0M 07:18, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Bad Style

This article has been improved a lot but the section "7 Spiders and People" still has bad prose style. Someone please add the {{{howto}}} tag to that section until it has been changed. --70.234.38.62 23:28, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Stupid text needs removing

The text "they are also related to the tick" is in the spider bites section and needs to be removed.

Done. --Crustaceanguy(t/co/cw) 20:06, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Taxobox

Subphylum Chelicerata should be added in the taxobox

A recent taxonomy is

• Superdomain: Biota
  • Domain: Eucytota (Jeffrey, 1971)
    • Kingdom: Animalia (Linnè, 1758)
      • Subkingdom: Eumetazoa (Butschli, 1910)
        • Branch: Bilateria (Hatschek, 1888)
          • Grade: Protostomia (Grobben, 1908)
            • Infrakingdom: Ecdysozoa (Aguinaldo, 1997)
              • Superphylum: Panarthropoda
                • Phylum: Arthropoda (Latreille, 1829)
                  • Subphylum: Chelicerata
                    • Class: Arachnida (Cuvier, 1812)
                      • Order: Araneae (Clerk, 1757)

                                   82.61.170.13 21:02, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Huh?

Quote: "For instance, a common jumping spider (Family: Salticidae), around ⅜ inch (1 cm) long, when pinched between the folds of a human's palm may inflict a bite that is about as painful as a bee sting."

I now ask, how many of you scratched your head when you read that? Perhaps I misread, but the article states that a typical jumping spider is 3/2 inches, or 1.5 inches, (1 cm) long. A bit paradoxical considering how 1 inch = 2.54 centimeters. Not a critical topic of discussion...it just confused me a bit. 202.216.125.248 13:16, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

The type is too small. What the article says is hard to see, so I made it bigger: ⅜. Until I did it looked like 3/2 instead of 3/8 to me too. Thanks. P0M 05:10, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Help Identifying Spider Breed

I just saw a spider in my bathroom which Ive never seen before, i live in N.ireland and while i dont believe there are any spiders round here that are venomous, they still frighten me. Would anyone be able to identify this spider type from the description i give? It was less than an inch in size, just. Had gold metalic stripes down the sides of its spinarette, and red on the top of its spinarette. It just absailed down from the ceiling infront of me as I was standing at the toilet..... quite frightening. Im interested in what breed it is, if somone could suggest a site I could use to identify it, maybe they could point it out to me?Baaleos 15:25, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Please sign your postings.

It's unclear to me whether you mean that the spider's body is a little less than an inch long or whether you mean that its total length, legs included, is about that size. (Spider dealers sell them by "legs included" length, and in my estimation they most generally put the spiders on tenterhooks to measure them ;-)

Metallic coloration makes it sound like one of the Salticidae (jumping spiders) to me. If the entire length of the spider, legs included, was about an inch most people could barely see the spinnerets, however. Even if the body-only length was nearly an inch, you most likely would not be able to notice the spinerettes unless it was one of the few genera that have extremely prominent ones. (See the "V" on the end of the spider in the first photo below. Those are two of her spinerettes.)

The fact that it came dropping down from the ceiling makes it sound like it was most likely a jumping spider simply taking a shortcut to wherever it wanted to go, or was a web weaving spider who was perhaps exploring for somewhere to build a nice orb web. Usually orb weavers like to stay outside, although there are some who favor places where a yard light or porch light will attract flying insects after dark. The Agelenidae have quite noticeable spinnerets, but they are generally quite drab in color. They make funnel-web structures and hide out in the darkened small end of the funnel. Another thing that makes it sound like a jumping spider to me is that it was in your bathroom. It usually happens in the autumn here in the mid-Atlantic states of the U.S. that jumping spiders come in and hang out on my bathroom walls. It may be the proximity to water that attracts them, once they come inside for the warmth. Has it recently been exceptionally dry where you are?

Some spiders in the British Isles are known as problem biters. They are the large spiders known as "fishing spiders." Personally, I've always wondered how anybody could get close enough to one of them to be bitten. Their relatives around here want nothing more than to get away from any contact with people. Other than the unpleasantness experienced by people who bait them into biting somehow, or perhaps put on a shoe in which one of them has taken temporary refuge, there should be nothing native to your part of the world that you should need to worry about. If you do have a jumping spider, you will find that they are actually curious about human beings. Some of them will jump onto your hand or your camera. I think some people get scared at that point and assume that the spider had intended to bite. Plenty of them have jumped onto me, and I am sure they would not fail if they intended to bite, but none of them ever has jumped and bitten. I've encouraged a couple of them to give me defensive bites by accidentally squeezing them. The bite was no worse than a bee sting, less, actually. On the other hand I once felt something on my neck, reached up and plucked it off, and discovered I had picked a green metallic jewel, a little Paraphidippus aurantius. Fortunately I didn't injure her and she didn't bite me. The web weaving spiders are either entirely unaware that they are on or around a human being (they would be legally blind if they were humans), or they are aware that they have landed on something that is warmer than ambient temperature and they bail out as quickly as they can find an edge to jump from.

Here is what some of these spiders look like:

• 
  Agelenopsis sp. female Note 2 spinerettes.
• 
  Dolomedes scriptus--Body 1", spinerettes almost invisible. Unlikely to dangle. I would not like to be bitten.
• 
  Paraphidippus aurantius, again, spinerettes are very difficult to see.
• 
  Argiope aurantia on her web, ventral view. Spinerettes are in the red "rosette", too tiny to make out clearly. The spider is 1" in body length. Most of the members of this genus are large and colorful.

Although the tarantulas do not make cobwebs or orb webs, they do construct their dwellings out of silk, and they have prominent spinerettes. Not even the arboreal tarantulas dangle at the ends of lengths of silk, however.

Take a look at the brighter, flashier spiders at the Family Araneidae section of the spiders on Wikipedia Commons, then look at the Salticidae. (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Spider) If nothing looks similar, take a look at the rest of what is there.

Try to find a copy of John Crompton's The Life of the Spider. It's by a British civil servant stationed in various places around China and S.E. Asia before around 1950, probably before WW II It will let you be less fearful about spiders. I got the book when it was published and have been "bitten" ever since. P0M 05:15, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, sorry i didnt sign b4, been a while since i used wiki. Hmm, nice pics, but they dont look like my spider. It was less than an inch in length, the legs were thin, and seemed slightly curved, like it walked on the tips, it did however have a larger abdomen, which is what had the gold stripe and red top. The larger abdomen was about a centimeter thick. All in all, the spider was longer than it was wide. It just absailed down, and landed on the "throne" and walked around the top of it, and when i went to get my housemate, i came back and it was gone. Its been quite wet here in n.ireland, lots of flooding, although, its been nice weather briefy recently, but not at the time of the appearance. Wonder if I found a new spider breed... Hehe Baaleos 15:25, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Anthropomorphising?

The text says "the male of the closely related Australian redback spider is killed ritually by the females".

I don't think spiders have a concept of "rituals". I suggest the word just be removed.

83.250.197.97 08:28, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

One of the definitions of "ritual" is any practice or pattern of behavior regularly performed in a set manner[1]. Plus, I have often seen phrases such as "mating rituals" in numerous extensive encyclopedias. It should not be removed. --Crustaceanguy 13:47, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

"Ritual killing" sounds like something done to fulfill a religious obligation. In biology, and in the philosophy of Mencius, a "ritual" is understood as something that is done in a stereotypical or conventionalized way to head off some kind of conflict. I've never heard of the cells in honeycomb being "ritually" constructed. But the way that a wolf on the losing side of a fight will lie on its back and expose its throat in submission is a "ritual" because it communicates the loser's inclination not to fight any more, motivates the winner to leave off his attack, and thus spares the life of the losing wolf to serve the pack. Humans have rituals of this sort, rituals that generally have to be learned. For instance, it may be that in some places one scratches on a door to solicit permission to enter or at least to warn the person inside that you are coming in but without hostile intent. In my culture we knock on doors before entering -- particularly if the guy on the other side is the bodyguard of a VIP.

Spiders do something that is indeed a ritual in this sense. They have patterns of behavior that identify a questing male to a female of the same species and negotiate putting prey capture behavior in abeyance for long enough to mate. (I doubt that the female spider makes a conscious decision not to eat the male. I suspect that the male's behavior unlocks both answering signal behavior and a physiological change in the female that turns down the hunger signals and turns up the mating behavior chemistry.

There are species of spiders that make consumption of the male a final part of the mating process. As far as I know, this part of the process does not involve any signaling behavior. It seems more like the way a bee goes on automatic to do its tiny part in making a cell in the growing honeycomb.

Some kinds of rituals do not appear to involve signaling, but they do handle certain problem situations in a conventionalized way. For instance, every human society has one or more ways to respectfully take care of the bodies of the dead. Mencius explained that originally humans had no such methodology as burial. Some insightful person realized s/he was disturbed by the sight of the body of an older relative that had been gnawed upon by scavengers and decided to cover it with earth and/or stones. Doing so made him/her feel much better, so the news of this creative solution was passed on to others and became the standard way to handle the problem in that society. One interesting thing is to consider what message non-compliance with such a ritual requirement sends to the other members of one's community: "He does not show respect for his dead parent." When cremation first came to my small town I think one common reaction to the practice was that it "just wasn't doing right by the dearly departed." On the other hand, burying some destitute stranger who happened to drop dead on the wayside would send the message: "I know how to be respectful to others, even including the wayfaring stranger."

I can't think of any behaviors among spiders that I would regard as ritualized other than the exchange of mating signals. The behavior must have been "learned" evolutionarily. It saves the lives of male spiders in search of a mate, and so serves the goal of keeping species population up. It saves the waste and inconvenience of failed matings between incompatible individuals, i.e., individuals that are physiologically and genetically incompatible. Some spiders send semaphore signals with their pedipalps, and some male spiders drum on the edges of the web of a female to signal that they are conspecifics, a behavior that is similar to our knocking on doors, or maybe just our knocking on certain doors with a certain knock. P0M 07:51, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

There are also mentions of "ritualized combat" between males of some species among the Salticidae. They "fight," but do so in a stereotyped way and rarely hurt each other. It's more like a wrestling match, and usually the larger male wins and the smaller males leaves the field. P0M 23:13, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I've edited the text since it is not clear how the eating of the male might be ritualized. If it can be established that, e.g., the male maneuvers its abdomen into the mouthparts of the female, then explain the "ritual offering" as such. P0M 23:32, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Editing Spiders

I've been away from this page for quite a while (I realized how long when I had to get a new account!) Patrick perhaps you could get me up to speed? What is needed to help this piece or is it pretty well done? David Richman 13:23, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I have been rather compulsively involved in textbook production (Chinese language not spiders of course), so I haven't been looking at this article at all closely. I just bought a few more books to try to do a better job checking the identifications of spider photos by species. I think you have much more experience in picking out the salient characteristics. Maybe we can't eliminate the possibility that, e.g., a particularly dull-colored specimen identified as P. johnsoni is not something else, but if somebody identified it as P. audax I think you would notice. (I might even notice that one, but there are plenty of cases where I have no clue.) I've been putting my own spider pictures on the Commons, and I've been using Mayflower to try to load all the spider pictures onto the gallery for spider pictures according to what people say their species are. (Occasionally I've been able to tell that something is a member of the Salticidae rather than the Lycosidae or something obvious like that, but most of the time somebody could tell me anything...)

There are now loads of Wikipedia spider articles, and many of them are flagged for lack of citations. Sometimes I know something because I remember what I read 50 years ago, but I have no idea of where to find evidence that can be cited. (One of my frustrations is that sometimes I know something like the typical size of some critter because I have one sitting on my ruler, but I can't cite the evidence of my senses because that is personal research. But you probably could peg the length to a research article or other reliable source.)

It seems to me that one of the things that is missing is information about spider intelligence, their capacity for learning, and spider behavior. I've gotten interested in P. johnsoni because it gets such a bad rap (aggressive, rather strongly venomous) in California. I bought an immature one from Todd Gearheart recently and I've been very impressed with how fearless and non-aggressive this one is. I can put my finger down right next to it and it isn't the least inclined to move. A while back I knocked the lid ajar and it got out without my realizing it was loose. I discovered a black spider in the torn backing of a book I was getting ready to repair, realized it looked an awful lot like the spider that was supposed to be in the jar, and then without any conscious intervention I reached out and picked it up between thumb and forefinger. I moved fast, too. Rather than jumping away, and rather than biting, it just stayed calm. I released it into another container and was a little surprised to see that I hadn't injured it in the least, and that it was indeed the spider that I had thought was securely contained. Fabre was interested in this kind of thing during the 19th century, but I don't recall seeing much current research of the sort that he did. If such research is available, perhaps we could mine it. (I did find one article indicating that jumping spiders can learn that insects located in one set of surroundings are safe to eat and the same kind of insects located in another set of surrounding are not safe to eat.)

Welcome back. P0M 08:22, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

P.S. I know what would have happened if I'd grabbed a big yellow jacket that way! P0M —Preceding comment was added at 08:27, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Poison?

It is my understanding that spiders do not secret poisons, rather inject venom. References towards poison, and poison glands should all be changed to venom, venom glands.

"In medicine (particularly veterinary) and in zoology, a poison is often distinguished from a toxin and a venom. Toxins are poisons produced via some biological function in nature, and venoms are usually defined as biologic toxins that are injected by a bite or sting to cause their effect, while other poisons are generally defined as substances which are absorbed through epithelial linings such as the skin or gut." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison

128.193.152.70 18:04, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Right. Mentions of "poison" keep creeping back in. Feel free to get a log-on identity and fix "poisons" up. Welcome. P0M 08:24, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

WHY?

Why can't unregisted users edit the article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.153.203.161 (talk) 15:16, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

It is very common for unregistered users to vandalize articles. If somebody is registered then that person has an identity and a reputation to protect. That doesn't mean that every unregistered user has bad intentions, of course. But it might be that every or almost every person who wants to vandalize would not like to be identified. Sorry for the inconvenience. It only takes a minute to register. I found something wrong in the spider article several years ago, and that's why I registered. P0M 06:18, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

hi —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.234.62.147 (talk) 20:09, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Copy of source

Large sections of this article appear to be copied from here [2] can an effort be made to edit the relevant sections? Me lkjhgfdsa (talk) 22:07, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

SPIDERS ROCK DUDE!!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.126.55.123 (talk) 23:18, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Before you accuse somebody of plagiarism you had better be sure of your facts. How can you possibly know who has copied from whom unless you can work out the timeline? Twice now I have had things that I wrote out of my own head declared to be plagiarism because somebody found the same text in one or another on-line source. The first time it happened the website that quoted Wikipedia actually cited the original article. The second time two people had to admit that, upon closer examination, the Wikipedia article came first. P0M (talk) 00:38, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

what sort of sick... sick...

person decided to put a picture of a waving spider next to arachnophobia, that is so... perverse.... —Preceding unsigned comment added by UltraMagnus (talk • contribs) 20:19, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

You do have a point. I'm not arachnophobic myself, but the image does rather jump out at you when you click the link in the TOC. I've moved it up to the "Reproduction" section, where it's actually somewhat relevant to the text. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 00:53, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Spiders as pets

I think that some mention needs to be made of spiders as pets. A section or a new article, preferably. It seems like a glaring omission to me that there is no mention of it at all. Esn (talk) 06:05, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Praise for a Phrase

"There is no need to be fearful; just do not grab a spider." Nicely put!66.68.30.191 (talk) 05:33, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. And how did you know that 19 September is my brother's birthday? Nice present. ;-) P0M (talk) 00:43, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Spider/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

I was surprised to see this was listed as a good article, since inline citation is sorely lacking. Although this is probably a field that relies on textbooks, even then it should be referenced a lot more densely. The other good article criteria (well written, broad, neutral, stable, images) seem ok. -- unsigned written by 21:01, 4 October 2008 User:Stevenfruitsmaak

I've done what I can except for the lead - that will take at most half an hour once we're happy with the content. Comments, please. -- Philcha (talk) 16:48, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Great work, my concerns have almost completely dissipated. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 17:15, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Does "almost" mean I should expect more detailed comments? -- Philcha (talk) 21:36, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

There are still two are three {{citation needed}}s lurking around, once these have been addressed I think we can close this review. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 21:39, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Zapped the blighters. I've also re-written the lead so that it now summarizes the content. -- Philcha (talk) 09:35, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your effort, my concerns are now gone and I've passed the article for GA review. Keep up the good work! --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 15:25, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Possible reason for lack of citations

The article lacks citations because on the topic of spiders most papers are specific to species or genera, not spiders in general. I dont feel the lack of citations is a reason for the article to be de-listed.--Arachnowhat (talk) 01:29, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Still, there are many specific examples of exceptions to general rules that involve specific species or genera. Those could at least be cited. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 13:11, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

yes, much general stuff is unsourced. while it will probably be a major piece of work to piece the refs together from textbooks, i guess this should probably be done soon. i don't have much time at the moment, but will see what i can do; if some other people would like to take out their textbook(s) on spiders and give nice refs to the facts in this article, i guess we should be able to get this article up to standards. one (to me) important thing: please don't clutter the text with in-source refs, instead use refs like this: <ref name=platnick2008>Platnick 2008</ref> and then quote the full source at the end of the article under References. it's really hard to edit an article with lots of full reference in the source, and i know of several very gifted people that refuse to work on cluttered articles like this. --Sarefo (talk) 09:06, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Is there a way to make citations come out so that there is, on level one, a bibliographical entry, e.g.,

Grodenchik, Jeffrey, Spider of Northubria, Cambridge 1908.

Grodenchik, Jeffrey, Spider of Southubria, Cambridge 1918.

and then on another level,

Grodenchik, 2, p. 138

Or something like that?

In lots of cases where the pages are set up just using the "ref" "endref" setup, one ends up having to repeat book name, publishers, etc., and it is extremely messy and inefficient. Maybe Sarefo San could set up a sandbox or a sample and we could adapt that setup to the entire spider article. P0M (talk) 16:01, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

shortcomings of the article

Having received notice that the article is under review as to its quality, I have just taken a quick run through most of it. As someonw with a lifetime interest in spiders and presumably fairly well informed, the article seems to be good in most respects. There are a couple places where the writing is in need of a tweak or two, but the main problem will be to find citations for the claims made in the article.

One of the difficulties with finding citations is that some things are matters of such common knowledge that it may be hard to find solid academic sources that state them explicitly. "Spiders have eight legs," might be one such item. It would be helpful to rank the items in the bibliography in terms of completeness and reliability, and then start the search for points needing citations with the most authoritative sources.

The other kind of difficulty may be with the claims about things such as herbivorous spiders, cartwheeling spiders, etc. I happen to have found external sources of information about these traits, but I don't remember where I found them. People who add such items really should provide citations to them.

One other source of difficulty lies with claims like the following:

Spiders have many medical uses such as using their venom to treat arthritis.

There is a great deal of interest among pharmacologists because each genus may have a venom with its own "recipe," and that venom may contain toxins that affect the human body in various ways. The effects that make it a deadly toxin when injected into insects may make it a way of activating or deactivating various processes in human bodies. That action may in turn be useful in determing how the human body actually works. Sometimes effects have been discovered that promise a therapeutic benefit. I don't remember how it anticipated to be beneficial, but there is something in the venom of one of the favorite pet store tarantulas, Grammostola rosea, that may be helpful in treating heart attack victims. But I have never heard even a hint of interest in spider venom to treat arthritis. At the same time, the use of bee venom as a possible treatment for arthritis continues to be of interest to some medical researchers. So it is possible that the brief passage quoted above should be removed until such time as a solid citation can be provided. P0M (talk) 00:02, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Another point, the only actual medical use of spiders, as far as I know, is the folk practice of using spider webs to stop bleeding. I know of no medical use of venom or synthesized venom analogs or anything like that, at least not outside of the medical labs and even there they are probably not ready to try anything on humans yet. But we need evidence, not conjecture.P0M (talk) 00:11, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Trying to maintain GA status

I happen to have got a good invertebrate textbook out of a library (for Arthropod & Mollusc), so I'll do what I can for Spider. I'm no entomologist, my main interest is paleontology, so I think I can handle the antomical and phylogeny stuff OK, and maybe the medical stuff, but almost certainly need some help with refs for ecological, economic, and cultural / folklore aspects. PS: please don't remove the spider internal anatomy image, I have plans for it. PPS: I get the impression my referencing style is different from the one mentioned above - I've divided the book into chunks about the size of a journal article and used named refs for each chunk. I don't have time to change my referencing style as I'm also in the middle of a complex set of paleo artciles. PPPS: some of the "Body plan" stuff should very likely be moved up a level to Arachnid and Chelicerate, but I'll think about that when I've done all I can with the textbook. -- Philcha (talk) 23:10, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Update: Still a few stubborn items that look useful but for which I can't find refs. Some re-structure needed. I need a couple of days' rest from this article, but hope to finish updating by end of this week. -- Philcha (talk) 14:22, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

{{Cambrian explosion calling card }}

Unreferenced material removed during GA re-review

The reviewer found the article "sorely lacking in citations". I could not find citations for the following items, and have removed them from the article. If you think any are worth adding back into the the article, please make sure they have adequate references, properly formatted using citation templates - see WP:V and WP:RS - otherwise they may be removed without notice. -- Philcha (talk) 09:21, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Lead

Spiders are found all over the world, from the tropics to the Arctic, living underwater in silken domes they supply with air, and on the tops of mountains.

In 1973, Skylab 3 took two spiders into space to test their web-spinning capabilities in zero gravity.

This has refs but appears superfluous: -- Philcha (talk) 09:24, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

All spiders except those in the families Uloboridae and Holarchaeidae, and in the suborder Mesothelae (together about 350 species) can inject venom to protect themselves or to kill prey. Only about 200 species, however, have bites that can pose health problems to humans. Many larger species' bites may be quite painful, but will not produce lasting health concerns.

Body plan

Spiders, unlike insects, have only two body segments (tagmata) instead of three: a fused head and thorax (called a cephalothorax or prosoma) and an abdomen (called the opisthosoma). The exception to this rule are the assassin spiders, whose cephalothorax seems to be almost divided into two independent units.. The abdomen and cephalothorax are connected with a thin waist called the pedicle or the pregenital somite, a trait that allows the spider to move the abdomen in all directions. The pedicle (waist) is actually the last segment (somite) of the cephalothorax and is lost in most other members of the Arachnida (in scorpions it is only detectable in the embryos).

Re assassins, the "citation" is just an HTML link to a DOI. The GA rules require a completed citation template. -- Philcha (talk) 10:25, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Circulation and respiration

Among smaller araneomorph spiders we can find species who have evolved also the anterior pair of book lungs into trachea, or the remaining book lungs are simply reduced or missing, and in a very few the book lungs have developed deep channels, apparently signs of evolution into tracheae. Some very small spiders in moist and sheltered habitats have no breathing organs at all, and instead breathe directly through their body surface.

Feeding, digestion and excretion

Many spiders will store prey temporarily. Web-building spiders that have made a shroud of silk to quiet their envenomed prey's death struggles will often leave them in these shrouds and then consume them later.

Spiders are capable of digesting their own silk, so some spiders may eat their used webs. When a spider drops down on a single strand of silk and then returns, it will generally rapidly consume the strand of silk on its way back up.

Sense organs

Spiders usually have eight eyes in various arrangements, a fact that is used to aid in taxonomically classifying different species. Most species of the Haplogynae have six eyes, although some have eight (Plectreuridae), four (eg., Tetrablemma) or even two (most Caponiidae) eyes. Sometimes one pair of eyes is better developed than the rest, or even, in some cave species, there are no eyes at all. The main pair of eyes in jumping spiders even see in color. Net-casting spiders have enormous, compound lenses that give a wide field of view and gather available light very efficiently.

Locomotion

The peacock spider is a jumping spider with extensible flaps around its abdomen, with which it is able to glide when jumping, as well as use for mating display.

Silk production

The suborder Mesothelae is unique in having only two types of silk glands — thought to be the ancestral condition. Later some groups evolved (called ecribellate) that use silk threads dotted with sticky droplets to capture prey ranging from small arthropods to sometimes even small bats and birds.

Reproduction and life cycle

After sexual maturity is reached, the general rule is that spiders stop molting, but the females of some non-araneomorph species will continue to molt the rest of their lives.

Methods of capturing prey

While spiders are generalist predators, in actuality their different methods of prey capture often determine the type of prey taken. Thus web-building spiders rarely capture caterpillars, and crab spiders that ambush prey in flowers capture more bees, butterflies and some flies than other insects. Groups of families that tend to take certain types of prey because of their prey capture methods are often called guilds. A few spiders are more specialized in their prey capture. Dysdera captures and eats sowbugs, pillbugs and beetles, while pirate spiders eat only other spiders. Bolas spiders in the family Araneidae use sex pheromone analogs to capture only the males of certain moth species. Despite their generally broad prey ranges, spiders are one of the most important links in the regulation of the populations of insects.

Orb webs

Spiders in several families (eg., Araneidae, Tetragnathidae, Nephilidae) spin the familiar spiral snare that most people think of as the typical spider web. On average, an orb-weaving spider takes 30 minutes to an hour to weave a web. They range in size from quite large (6+ cm) to very small (<1 cm), but all are quite harmless to humans, beyond the shock entailed from walking into a face-height web and having a large spider dangling from your nose. Many of the daytime hunters have a 'ferocious' appearance, with spines or large 'fangs', but they are almost invariably inoffensive, preferring to drop on a dragline to the ground when disturbed, rather than bite, which can nevertheless be quite painful.

Tangleweb / cobweb spiders

Members of this group (family Theridiidae) are characterized by irregular, tangled, three-dimensional non-sticky webs, also popularly known as cobwebs, generally low and anchored to the ground or floor and wall. They are commonly found in or near buildings; some build webs in bushes. The spider generally hangs in the center of its web, upside-down. Prey is generally ground-dwelling insects such as ants or crickets, in addition to small flying insects. These include the infamous black widows, the minute happyface spider, and thousands of other species.

Other types of webs

Some (the Linyphiidae) make various forms of bowl- or dome-shaped webs with or without a flat sheet or a tangled web above or below. Some make a flat platform extending from a funnel-shaped retreat, with generally a tangle of silk above the web. The common northern hemisphere 'funnel-web', 'house' or 'grass' spiders are only superficially similar to the notorious Sydney funnel-web spider, and are generally considered to be quite harmless. Some of the more primitive group Atypidae may make tubular webs up the base of trees, from inside which they bite insects that land on the webbing. These spiders look quite ferocious, but are not generally considered to be particularly dangerous to humans.

Taxonomy

Because of difficulties in collecting these often very minute and evasive animals, and because of many specimens stored in collections waiting to be described and classified, it is believed that up to 200,000 species may exist.

Mygalomorphae

They have ample venom glands that lie entirely within their chelicerae. Occasionally members of this suborder will even kill small fish, small mammals, etc. Most members of this suborder occur in the tropics and subtropics, but their range can extend farther toward the poles, e.g. into the southern and western regions of the United States and Canada, the northern parts of Europe and south into Argentina and Chile.

Creatures often mistaken for spiders

In addition to the true spiders, there are several arachnids commonly mistaken for spiders, but that are not true spiders.

• Camel spider, a species of solifugid (also commonly called sun-spiders or wind-scorpions), are the source of many urban legends. Although they have no venom the camel spider has been known to attack humans, focusing on exposed skin, and with fangs capable of tearing human flesh. Several myths surround camel spiders, and their size is usually exaggerated. While they are really the size of an adult human hand, myths tell they are as large as the lower half of an adult human leg. Also, they are harmless to humans, and will only attack if disturbed.
• The daddy long-legs or harvestman is a member of the order Opiliones. These round-bodied arachnids have only two eyes and their heads are fused to their bodies. However, the name "daddy long-legs" is sometimes used to refer to cellar spiders, which have a similar leg shape; these are true spiders. Both are also often said to produce a deadly venom. While the harvestmen do not produce venom at all, the cellar spider's venom is completely harmless to humans. The term daddy long-legs is also used in British English to refer to the Crane fly, which is an insect and not an arachnid at all.

Benefits to humans

Although spiders are feared and disliked by many, they benefit humankind by destroying many insects pests such as fly, mosquitoes, grasshoppers, locusts, cockroaches, and aphids.

This Article is in Terrible Shape

Some of the sections that have been removed by Philcha, for lack of citations, are actually common knowledge about spiders: the fact that some will wrap and store prey before eating it; or, the fact that female tarantulas (mygalomorphs) continue to molt after maturity, for instance. Many of these entries should be restored to the article, citations or not. They are common knowedge to those who know anything about spiders. Citations can be found in books written about spiders, and written by spider experts (and this does not mean zoologists or entomologists, but arachnologists. It has been my experience that entomologists or zoologists in general do not know enough about spiders to write definitively on them, because they have not specialized in the study of spiders.).

What this article needs is review and rewriting by someone who knows something about spiders, preferrably a professional arachnologist. At present it is not only poorly written but contains numerous factual errors. Citations are the least of its problems.

I urge armchair enthusiasts to leave this article alone, unless they have at least read about and specifically studied spiders for a number of years. It is a thankless task for those of who do know something about spiders to constantly correct these and other errors in an article that can be changed by anyone else whether or not they actually know something about spiders. That is one reason why I don't take on the task mnyself. In my opinion, based on its history, this article will *never* be suitable as a reliable source of information on spiders. - Dipluridae —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dipluridae (talk • contribs) 04:56, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I think that most of the things that have been removed by Pilcha can be supported by citations. I have been a bit busy with midterm exams and a family emergency, and so have not had time myself. Could we please tone the rhetoric down a bit? If there are currently believed to be factual errors in the article, please list them here. P0M (talk) 05:56, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

A Final Plea

Again, I urge Philcha to stop removing unsourced material from this article, as he doesn't seem to know what material is accurate and what isn't, citation notwithstanding. I have just had to replace accurate information that he'd removed as being unsourced: the fact that spiders will bite in self defense.

This is what I mean when I said that only someone who has studied spiders specifically for a period of time, and knows something about them not just from reading books but from observing them in nature, should be editing this article or contributing to it. Writing "citation needed" next to unsourced material in the article is preferrable to a blanket removal of the material, especially when done by someone who apparently doesn't know, of his own knowledge, what "unsourced material" in the article is or isn't accurate.

Forgive me for being blunt, but the article is becoming worse by the hour because of this practice. Dipluridae (talk —Preceding undated comment was added at 07:46, 20 October 2008 (UTC).

I would prefer not to start an edit war. I have been able to find a citation for one item, and am working on another that took a long time to track down. I agree that "citation needed" is the correct way to handle these situations. The next step, after some time has passed, would be to announce the impending removal in this discussion space. Nobody should be functioning as the owner of this page. P0M (talk) 09:12, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

In case no-one noticed, Spider was about to be demoted from GA for lack of citations. The GA Re-review was announced over a week ago. The reviewer seems to think my efforts were a big step in the right direction. In addition some of the sources I've cited plainly say that a lot of "received wisdom" about spiders is inaccurate. Conspicuous examples include mating cannibalism, and most pre-1990 ideas about webs.

I may have removed some of your pet ideas, but I've also introduced new, well-sourced and sometimes surprising material on anatomy, intelligence, non-carnivorous feeding, sociality, phylogeny and fossil record.

Forgive me for being blunt, but adding unsourced material will make it worse in terms of Wikipedia's published policies, and would be very likely to introduce inaccuracies.

As for your unsourced addtion about biting in self-defence, I intend to remove it immediately as it's both unsourced and superfluous - see section "Spider bites". -- Philcha (talk) 09:55, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I follow the affective content of your communication, but not your intended rational meaning. Surely you are not implying that spiders will not bite in self defense. P0M (talk) 21:34, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

If you mean bite humans, it's covered in "Spider bites". Otherwise it needs a citation. -- Philcha (talk) 22:23, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

They're even older...

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/10/31/spider-scorpion-genetic.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.245.42.233 (talk) 19:10, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't trust this particular report. "The oldest fossil spider is 125 to 135 million years old, while the oldest fossil scorpion is around 200 million years old" is wrong about both spiders (see Spider#Fossil_record) and scorpions (see Chelicerate#Fossil_record) - and "Spiders and Scorpions Among World's Oldest Creatures" is ridiculous (see Evolutionary history of life). I'll wait until this research is reported in a scientific journal or by a reliable mag such as New Scientist.

But thanks for making a note of it here. Please keep on doing so, as some of the magazine reports are good leads. -- Philcha (talk) 22:33, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

The original paper is: Jeyaprakash A, Hoy MA (2008) First divergence time estimate of spiders, scorpions, mites and ticks (subphylum: Chelicerata) inferred from mitochondrial phylogeny. Exp Appl Acarol. doi: 10.1007/s10493-008-9203-5

and is an excellent example of what happens when molecular biologists can't be bothered to go to the library and do some proper background reading. A grad-student armed with Wikipedia could have made a better job of it. They completely mis-cite the arachnid fossil record and their statements in this area should not be taken seriously.

{{editsemiprotected}} duplicate phrase needs to be deleted

Male jumping spider waving to a female.

Spiders generally use elaborate courtship rituals to prevent the large females from eating the small males before fertilization, except where the male is so much smaller that he is not worth eating. In web-weaving species precise patterns of vibrations in the web are a major part of the rituals, while patterns of touches on the female's body are important in many spiders that hunt actively, and may "hypnotize" the female. Gestures and dances by the male are important for jumping spiders, which have excellent eyesight. If courtship is successful, the male injects his sperm from the pedipalps into the female's into the female's genital opening, known as the epigyne, on the underside of her abdomen. Female's reproductive tracts vary from simple tubes to systems that include seminal receptacles in which females store sperm and release it when they are ready.

SHOULD READ:

Male jumping spider waving to a female.

Spiders generally use elaborate courtship rituals to prevent the large females from eating the small males before fertilization, except where the male is so much smaller that he is not worth eating. In web-weaving species precise patterns of vibrations in the web are a major part of the rituals, while patterns of touches on the female's body are important in many spiders that hunt actively, and may "hypnotize" the female. Gestures and dances by the male are important for jumping spiders, which have excellent eyesight. If courtship is successful, the male injects his sperm from the pedipalps into the female's genital opening, known as the epigyne, on the underside of her abdomen. Female's reproductive tracts vary from simple tubes to systems that include seminal receptacles in which females store sperm and release it when they are ready.

"into the female's" occurs twice in the original version.

216.162.201.13 (talk) 02:19, 3 December 2008 (UTC)Jeff Dantzler (Seattle, WA)

Corrected! Thanks for bringing this up! --DA Skunk - (talk) 06:02, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Mistake in Evolution Section

In this section, the statement: "Some Triassic mygalomorphs appear to be members of the family Hexathelidae, which includes modern tarantulas and the notorious Sydney funnel-web spider, and their spinnerets appear adapted for building funnel-shaped webs to to catch jumping insects"

should be fixed. What those in the the USA refer to as tarantulas are in the family Theraphosidae, not Hexathelidae. Since "tarantula" may have different regional meanings, it should not be used here. The statement should read: "members of the family Hexathelidae, which includes the modern and notorious Sydney funnelweb spider, Atrax robustus',' and..." Kyle Reese (talk) 20:49, 11 December 2008 (UTC)Kyle Reese

Thanks for pointing out the linguistic booby-trap. I've edited the sentece, see what you think. --Philcha (talk) 22:31, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Too many images

When this article passed its GAR it had plenty of images. More have been added since then, and it is in danger for becoming a picture gallery. In particular the images across the bottom of Spider#Reproduction and life cycle form a wall that cuts the article in two. I propose to remove the images across the bottom of Spider#Reproduction and life cycle and probably to restore the images used in the version that passed the GAR. --Philcha (talk) 01:06, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Very good point. The images that were there when it passed the GAR could even us a bit of thinning out...(Though, the image for the Ctenizidae family should stay the same as the previous was incorrectly identified.)-- Arachnowhat (talk) 02:14, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

At the time of the GAR I thought each image supported something in the text, which is my usual cirterion for using images. However even then I thought there were rather a lot. Which do you think are poorest value for money, especially in the most crowded parts of the article? --Philcha (talk) 12:02, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Taking into consideration the image specific for spiders, this image seems to just be a waste of space. I will leave the images in the Reproduction and life cycle section up for someone else to make decisions on.(Along with the funnel web image here, and the images at the base of this section.) -- Arachnowhat (talk) 22:13, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree about Arthropod_body_struct_01.png and have removed it. I have also removed the ones across the bottom of the "Reproduction" section as they cut the article in two and add negligible value. --Philcha (talk) 23:24, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Someone had removed File:Fried_spiders_Skuon_Cambodia.jpg (a picture of spiders as food), but I think this was a mistake, and have replaced it. It may be justified to remove pictures of various species (since this is a general article on spiders), but this was the only picture to illustrate spiders as food, and it should be included. As a westerner, I have never seen cooked spiders in real life, and this picture is very informative. If there are more pictures that should be removed from this article, this is not one of them in my opinion. leevclarke (talk) 14:46, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Needs improvement

• Too many red links. Please make stubs for them all or dewikify it.
• Lead is clunky and far too large. Too many details of anatomy which are best kept for the sections.

AshLin (talk) 14:30, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Red links are not a disqualification for GA status, although they are for FA - see for example Talk:Arthropod/GA1. I prefer to leave the red links in for now in the hope that someone with a more specific interest in spiders will be prompted to fill in the gaps.

Re the lead, I sympathize. However WP:LEAD's ideas on lead length do not work well for articles on high-level invertebrate taxa, as non-specialist readers do not have the "built-in" understanding of invertebrate anatomies (plural!) that they have for vertebrate anatomy. In the GA review of Arthropod two reviewers agreed to apply WP:IAR in such cases.

Nevertheless if you can come up with a shorter version that would be welcome. I suspect the features that are in common with other arthropods or chelicerates could be downplayed. However the specialized use of the chelicerae as fangs is important, as are cephalization of the nervous system and possession of spinnerets (in cladistic analyses spinneres are the distinguishing feature of spiders).

I suggest you create an alternative version in a sandbox and then post a link to it here, so that we can discuss it. --Philcha (talk) 15:10, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Proposed replacement for lead image

What do people think about replacing the current lead image with this higher res alternative? --Fir0002 09:25, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Garden Orb Weaver with prey

I slightly prefer the existing one, at the size shown in the article. --Philcha (talk) 10:13, 30 December 2008 (UTC)