Because of this tendency to split off into new species, daddy longlegs can look very different depending on where they live, and each species will have a very small range: “One mountain top will have one species, another mountain top will have another species,” Clouse says. “First of all, if you’re living in a leaf litter with dirt and debris and little pieces of deadwood, they’re exactly the right color brown—they truly just disappear,” Clouse says. Vibrating may also increase the chances of capturing insects that have just brushed their web and are still hovering nearby, or further entangle prey that may have otherwise been able to free itself. Photo by Ron Clouse. We tend to associate spiders with their ability to build a web to catch prey, but there exists an entire family of spiders which does not resort to this technique.…. Once, Clouse and his fellow scientists observed a big female in Brazil that had just laid 30 slime-encased eggs on a leaf. “When it molts again, it would be deformed, but there would be at least another leg starting or developing there. “Perhaps they do this when conditions become dry and they need to maintain high humidity,” he says. During the day many of them hide in crevasses, and when disturbed they usually curl up and remain motionless for several minutes.” Yes, they play dead—which works extraordinarily well for a couple of reasons. Or perhaps they are trying to bolster their chemical defenses.”. "It probably keeps fungus and stuff off. Pholcids are found in every continent in the world except Antarctica. “She probably opens the package up and takes the sperm inside; it’s kept alive [until] the sperm goes into her reproductive tract somewhere, where it meets the eggs and fertilizes.” Then, the female uses a telescoped ovipositor longer than her body to lay the eggs deep in the dirt. On one hand, you learn so much! “You can’t really tell by body size how long they’re going to live,” Clouse says. And if a female has the gene to produce lots of sneaky males, she has an advantage when there aren’t a lot of sneaky males. When finished feeding they will clean the web by unhooking the remains of the prey and letting the carcass drop from the web. “Their day is something like this: They’re in a crevice until about 7 o’clock, when they come walking out and they sit on a leaf all night long. After measuring the spider's fangs at approximately 0.25 mm, Adam Savage inserted his hand into a container with several daddy-long-legs, and reported that he felt a bite which produced a mild, short-lived burning sensation. “I presume that if an immature daddy longlegs, what we call a nymph, lost a leg or had an injury, it could very well get repaired,” Clouse says. “We see injured ones—they’ll have an article cut off on the end. “But in general, when something with an exoskeleton gets injured, they can’t do very much until the next molt happens.” And daddy longlegs, once they’re fully grown, don’t molt anymore. “In the field, where these big ones are, the frustration of my colleagues is that they always seem to come upon them already eating something!” Clouse says. The male cellar spiders reach the age of reproduction in one year and usually die after copulating, while the female can live for about 3 years. Not true. What happens next, though, isn’t clear. There might be as many as 10,000 species of daddy longlegs, with 6000 to 7000 currently described. The movement may make it difficult for a predator to locate or strike the spider, or may be a signal to an assumed rival to leave. [12] Additionally, recent research has shown that pholcid venom is relatively weak in its effects on insects. The bigger species, like the kind Clouse studied in Brazil, tend to live for less than two years, but the tiny species he’s currently studying can probably live for up to seven years. Birds, frogs, and lizards frequently make meals of daddy longlegs. Females still like big strong males, and so these sneaky males tend to remain a certain percentage of the population over stretches of time. Hosts Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage first established that the spider's venom was not as toxic as other venoms, after being told about an experiment whereby mice were injected with venom from both a daddy long-legs and a black widow, with the black widow venom producing a much stronger reaction. Presumably the latter ones can sneak close to females and obtain matings without engaging in brutal competition with other males.”, It’s not as weird as it sounds; Clouse says it happens in a number of animals where there’s a lot of competition between males that is driven by female choice.

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