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Photo#391072
Spring cleaning

Spring cleaning
Massachusetts, USA
Size: 8 mm egg sac, 1 mm hole
I've been checking all the jars, bags, etc. in which I've put various bug-related things over the past year, and I'm a bit perplexed by the contents of this small jar. I'd collected the above (apparently tetragnathid) egg sac in hopes of raising the spiderlings to adulthood, but none ever emerged. When I checked the jar yesterday, I found an ichneumon and a number of tiny flies, each of which seems to be a different kind. The ichneumon seems to be the right size to have made the exit hole in the egg sac. The origin of the flies is a mystery, although I wonder if any of them might be phorid spider egg parasitoids. The only other thing in the jar is a moldy moth pupa, which I have no idea why I collected. Oh, and the birch leaf to which the egg sac is attached. (I wonder, also, if any of these could be gall midges that emerged from a gall that I might have previously put in the jar, then thrown away, not realizing they had emerged since they're so small.)

5/2/2010: I cut open the spider egg sac, and there were some fecal pellets of some sort and not much else. The moth pupa had at least one wasp cocoon in it, but apparently this was not the origin of the ichneumon, which is a parasitoid of spider egg sacs.

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