March 28, 2012

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Spiders in Borneo: Falling from above

By Wayne Maddison

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This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American

In a previous post I told how we use a beating sheet -- a sheet stretched with tent poles to catch spiders that fall from vegetation we've shaken or beaten. Whenever I do this, more falls onto the sheet than just spiders. Insects, centipedes, earthworms, crabs, onychophorans, dead leaves, and sticks are among the other things that land on the sheet. Earthworms? Yes, there is often soil and litter that accumulates between branches. Crabs? Yes, a terrestrial crab fell on my sheet a few days ago.

The most memorable things landing on my sheets over the years in various tropical places are these:

A poison arrow frog, Dendrobates. Very cute, but I did not encourage it to linger on my sheet.

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A poisonous viper, Bothrops. See the story on the Beaty Museum's blog.

Ant colonies. This happens several times a day. There are many tropical ants that make their nests in trees, and when the tree is shaken, the whole colony lands on the sheet. Or, half on the sheet and half on my head. Then I start counting 1, 2, 3, .. By 10, I've usually felt the first bite or sting. Of many.

Wasp nest. The rule: drop the beating sheet and run the other direction. Then, hope you can return in 10 minutes to retrieve the sheet.

And the new addition to this list from Mulu: a bat. The other day I beat a plant and saw this tightly bundled bat on my sheet. I called over Edy and Alex, who took this photo. Right after the photo, the bat turned over and flew away, perhaps in shock, but apparently unharmed:

Previously in this series:

 

Spiders in Borneo: Introduction

Spiders in Borneo: Undiscovered biodiversity

Spiders in Borneo: The guests of honor: Salticidae

Spiders in Borneo: Team Salticid

Spiders in Borneo: Mulu National Park

Spiders in Borneo: Dreaming about salticid spiders

Spiders in Borneo: Jumping spiders in the forest

Spiders in Borneo: Beating around the bushes

Spiders in Borneo: Spiders in leaf litter

Spiders in Borneo: A Vertical Life

Spiders in Borneo: Leeches and eyeballs

Spiders in Borneo: Breaking News!

Text and images © W. Maddison, under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license (CC-BY)

Wayne Maddison is a biologist who studies the diversity and evolution of jumping spiders. When he was thirteen years old in Canada, a big jumping spider looked up at him with her big dark eyes, and he's been hooked ever since. Jumping spiders hunt like cats, creeping and pouncing, and the males perform amazing dances to females. His fascination with the many species of jumping spiders led to an interest in their evolutionary relationships, and then to methods for analyzing evolutionary history. He received a PhD from Harvard University. He is now a Professor at the University of British Columbia, and the Scientific Director of the Beaty Biodiversity Museum. He has taken it as his mission to travel to poorly known rainforests to document the many still-unknown species before they are gone, and to study them and preserve them in museums for future generations.

More by Wayne Maddison

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