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Southern House Spider
Even though the picture quality is poor, this is an image of Southern House Spider (Kukulcania hibernalis). I found this spider on its web on the corner of my house in Graham, NC. I found this species interesting because the web was so hard to see. At first glance, it looked like the spider was floating. The more I thought about how hard it was to see the web, the closer I came to the realization that this was actually an advantage for the spider. The Southern House Spider could be classified as a passive predator, meaning the spider waits for insects to get caught in the web. This relates to a type 1 functional response curve, where the rate that the spider catches prey increases as the prey density increases. So, the spider consumes more insects as the insect population increases. This trade off allows the Southern House Spider to spend more time searching for food and less time chasing and killing their food.
Credit for the species’ name and more info on spiders found in NC:
www.spiders.us/species/filter/north-carolina/
Southern House Spider
Even though the picture quality is poor, this is an image of Southern House Spider (Kukulcania hibernalis). I found this spider on its web on the corner of my house in Graham, NC. I found this species interesting because the web was so hard to see. At first glance, it looked like the spider was floating. The more I thought about how hard it was to see the web, the closer I came to the realization that this was actually an advantage for the spider. The Southern House Spider could be classified as a passive predator, meaning the spider waits for insects to get caught in the web. This relates to a type 1 functional response curve, where the rate that the spider catches prey increases as the prey density increases. So, the spider consumes more insects as the insect population increases. This trade off allows the Southern House Spider to spend more time searching for food and less time chasing and killing their food.
Credit for the species’ name and more info on spiders found in NC:
www.spiders.us/species/filter/north-carolina/