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The Spider Club News The Spider Club News Editor: Joan Faiola SEPTEMBER 2013 - Vol.29 #3 Posted on Facebook recently! But of course we know that spiders are our FRIENDS! (Note that no mention is made of the fangs!) Spider Club News September 2013 PAGE 1 In this issue Page 4 Who are we? 4 Mission Statement 4 Committee 5 From the Hub - Chairman’s letter 5 From the Editor 6 Books: Spiders of Toronto 7 Spider people 8 Event Report - ARC identification and sorting session 9 The Hobbit and his Spider, by Peter Jäger 11 Sex Wars: Reversal of the Black Widow myth 12 New paper: Ian Engelbrecht – Pitfall trapping of trapdoor spiders 13 Guest Column – Charles Lindsey: Review of paper by Rick Vetter on Arachnophobic entomologists 16 Spidering in Knysna – by Heide Davel 18 Exxaro Baboon Spider relocation 19 Some Interesting Spiders from Zimbabwe 21 Spider Club Diary 2013-2014 THE SPIDER CLUB OF SOUTHERN AFRICA RESERVES COPYRIGHT ON ITS OWN MATERIAL. PLEASE CONTACT THE CLUB AT [email protected] for permission to use any of this content. DISCLAIMER THE VIEWS OF THE CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS PUBLICATION DO NOT NECESSARILY COINCIDE WITH THOSE OF THE SPIDER CLUB OF SOUTHERN AFRICA. Spider Club News September 2013 PAGE 2 Who are we? The Spider Club of Southern Africa is a non-profit organisation. Our aim is to encourage an interest in arachnids – especially spiders and scorpions - and to promote this interest and the study of these animals by all suitable means. Membership is open to anyone – people interested in joining the club may apply to any committee member for information. Field outings, day visits, arachnid surveys and demonstrations, workshops and exhibits are arranged from time to time. A diary of events and outings is published at the end of this newsletter. Mission Statement “The Spider Club provides a fun, responsible, social learning experience, centred on spiders, their relatives and on nature in general.” Contact Us WEBSITE: http://www.spiderclub.co.za EMAIL ADDRESS: [email protected] Visit our website, and send us photos and news that we can post there! …. At the Spider Club of Southern Africa page Committee Treasurer Jaco Le Roux 083 258 8969 [email protected] Editor Joan Faiola 082 565 6025 [email protected] Chairman by default Astri Leroy 073 168 7187 [email protected] Membership Paul Cowan 082 773 5724 [email protected] PRO Peet Van der Ark 071 609 5790 [email protected] Webmaster Steve Rubin 084 617 0800 [email protected] Member at large Vanora Naude 082 926 5364 [email protected] Spider Club News September 2013 PAGE 3 So this web does not HAVE a hub but it is an impressive size, about as big as a king-size bed! It was built by one of Africa’s social spider species, either Agelena consociata or A. republicana. In South Africa we are more familiar with the solitary members of this family such as the funnel-web spiders in the genera Olorunia, Benoitia and Agelena. As I am sure you are aware most spiders are inherently anti- social, many will quite happily catch and consume members of their own species if the opportunity arises, Web of Agelena consociata taken in Uganda which must be a barrier to sociality. 2009. Photo Astri Leroy. There are degrees of sociality in any group of animals from loose aggregations, groups of siblings to truly social groups such as those found amongst social insects. Homo sapiens, I think, falls somewhere in the middle. We do not like being alone and most people want to feel wanted by their family and friends and respected by their peers. We can co-operate, though we don’t always, are generally altruistic (especially about our young), we live in communities and groups of many sizes, we like to be liked and we seem to love communicating – mostly about ourselves it must be admitted - by talking, story-telling, writing, and nowadays posting our doings on social media platforms. This brings me to The Spider Club of Southern Africa’s Facebook page. It has been overwhelmingly successful because it is easy to access and should be a non-threatening environment for spider people to contact one another. People from all over have become friends, acute and interesting observations have been made and some really exceptional photographs have been posted. It has been a friendly and lively forum until a recent hiccup when a senior and respected member of our community posted an unacceptably abrasive message in reply to an interesting suggestion regarding other sites to post spider photos. The message and resulting thread was quickly removed (although in hindsight it might have been a good thing to leave it there) and only a few people noticed and commented. A great deal of behind-the-scenes discussions have since taken place, the upshot being that we would like to encourage those posting photographs on our Facebook page to cross-post to other forums, in particular those run on a scientific basis so that really valuable observations are not lost. I am sure all of you know about the South African National Survey of Arachnida – SANSA. If not, go to www.arc.agric.za and follow the quick links. You will find lots of useful and interesting stuff but be warned it is a slow site. The great thing about this site is that if you submit photos and even better if you submit photos AND the specimen, you WILL get the arachnid identified. The SANSA Virtual Museum is at http://www.arc.agric.za/vmuseum/vmuseumMain.aspx. iSpot is run by SANBI (South African National Biodiversity Institute). It accepts data for all taxonomic groups: plants, animals and fungi, terrestrial and marine. Posting of species interactions are encouraged, even when you do not know the identity of the host plant, prey insect, animal predator, or parasitic fungus – other specialists will help. All users can contribute an ID, which is weighted by reputation. Users earn reputations by making IDs that expert users agree with, creating an interactive mentor-mentee relationship. Comments and discussions take place online. A taxonomy tree and dictionary help reduce spelling errors and navigate relationships. A googlemap makes entering localities easier, but if you have a smart camera this is uploaded automatically. Have a look at it on www.iSpot.org.za or more specifically go to Spider Club News September 2013 PAGE 4 www.iSpot.org.za/species_dictionary/Araneae and enjoy! Be sure to request your Spider Club Badge when you join. Your help with identifications will add value and is guaranteed to be educative. There is now a third option, spiderMAP which is run from the ADU (Animal Demographic Unit) at Cape Town University. It went live in early September: go to http://vmus.adu.org.za/ You will have seen their weekly posting on our Facebook page by now and perhaps even posted photos of mygalomorphs spiders to it. Go to their website and check their fine logo. SpiderMAP is of course focused on spiders and to begin with mainly mygalomorphs. Again the problem of WHO will do the identifications, particularly of the araneomorph spiders, rears its head. The focus of these three sites is different. SANSA specialises in Arachnids, iSpot has a really wide scope and the ADU MAPS are self-explanatory - they map the distribution of animals, in the widest sense of animals. All of them gather useful information which will eventually be part of the National Biodiversity initiative and all of them have their place. Our happy Facebook page is ephemeral and currently the only way to capture all the useful scientific data that you photographers and acute observers post there is to laboriously contact the person who does the posting and ask them to submit their observations to any of the other sites. In the meantime, until we have the banners and contacts on our Facebook page this seems to be the only way to go. If you have any suggestions, please post them to [email protected] Arachnologically yours Astri From the Editor I am back after a sabbatical of one edition, when Astri ably took over the editorship. Thanks for standing in for me, Astri. In this edition, we feature a guest review from Charles Lindsey on Rick Vetter’s paper on arachnophobic entomologists (almost an oxymoron?), and Heide Davel, who is currently living in Gauteng, has written an article on the spiders of Knysna. And there are lots of other things besides. If you require more information regarding the various Virtual Museums that Astri refers to above, please contact us at [email protected] I would really appreciate feedback on the material we use in our newsletter. Do you like it, or are there other aspects of spiders and their kin that you would like to see featured here? We welcome new photos, stories or articles from you all. If you don’t talk to us, we don’t know whether we are doing a decent job. So please don’t hesitate to contact me on [email protected] . Yours in spidering Joan Spider Club News September 2013 PAGE 5 Books SPIDERS OF TORONTO A GUIDE TO THEIR REMARKABLE WORLD City of Toronto Biodiversity Series. Soft cover, A4 landscape format, 49 pages, full colour photos and drawings, published by the City of Toronto 2012. ISBN 978-1-895739-66-4, also available on line at http://www.mse.utoronto.ca/Assets/MSEng+Digital+Assets/nanOntario/SpidersofTO_CityofTO.pdf. A little history before I review this booklet. A long time ago Mark Fleminger arrived at a field outing in a beautiful MG Spider (a vintage sports car).
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