- A Desert Tarantula Lair?
In anticipation of a visit to Central Arizona, I featured the desert tarantula on my blog last week. I didn’t see one, but my partner Jerry snapped a photo of this amazing web. We found it off Highway 89 just as it descends from Peeple’s Valley towards Wickenburg.
I’d love some input from spider experts out there. Something spun a funnel-like web around the entrance to this hole. The hole was at least two inches in diameter. Could it be a tarantula? If not, what then?
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If you’d like to read my musings on another desert inhabitant, check back later this week. I’ll feature a species I did encounter on my trip: either something prickly or something small and fearsome.
No, this almost certainly isn’t a tarantula. It looks like the web of an agelenid. Spiders belonging to the family Agelenidae are also called funnel-web weavers. I’m guessing it’s a species belonging to the genus Agelenopsis. Agelenids and tarantulas are often found close together here in the southwest, but their use of silk is quite different. Tarantulas (here in the SW) live in burrows in the ground. They may close their burrows with silk, or even put silk on the ground surface around the entrance, but it does not extend up onto vegetation, and is not used for prey capture. Anelenids, on the other hand, construct funnel-shaped webs with a sheet that often does extend up onto vegetation, and is used to capture prey. The funnel-like part (shown in the photo) serves as a retreat. This retreat may extend down into a cavity in the soil, but the cavity is just a protected place for the retreat, not really a true burrow.
Thanks for the detailed information. The silk was very funnel-like, so your guess is probably right. Such a big hole for a small spider.