Monday, October 03, 2005



Clubionidae (Clubiona sp.?) I believe now however due
to the tell-tail leg size (first leg longer then the last) it
might be a Cheiracanthium mildei relative–the male
C. mildei palps are not similar however in this species.
I’m not sure yet but it’s definitely in the sack spider
family (Clubionidae) as is the C. mildei.

The big all grown up sack spiders disappeared about two
months or so ago. They just all the sudden were gone. It
seemed there yearly cycle was up and they died. Despite
there large numbers I did not find them dead in there sacks
or something. They vanished. Now there are 100s of hatch
lings already crawling around. This large adult is about to
become a mother–I took this picture several months ago.
Now it’s almost impossible to find an adult sack spider at
night here if possible at all. As most spiders live a life
cycle of only one year–it looks like the sack spider does
the same. Very few species can survive the winter and live
through it but some do. In the depths of this winter here
I will be able to shed light on this interesting question
here in The Dalles for the first time. What can you find
in winter? Obviously it changes with how cold it gets here.
We always get serious freezes–lots of them, and usually
a little snow–but we can have more then six feet or more as
we did a couple of years ago. Warm winters like last are
by no means warm and the temperature here is much
colder then Portland especially at night.

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