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Photo#501142
No true aquatic spiders - right?‏ - male

No true aquatic spiders - right?‏ - Male
Burlington County College, Rancocas Creek, Pemberton Township, Burlington County, New Jersey, USA
March 25, 2011
Size: Maybe around 1.5 - 2 mm?
Yesterday we were out doing a stream quality assessment. While sorting out our samples (dredged up from the muck on the bottom of the creek) we found what looked like an adult male dwarf spider walking around under the water on the bottom of the sample. It took us a long time to extract it because it was so small we kept loosing it in the muck under the water. I'm pretty sure it just wandered around under the water for 10-15 minutes, on a damselfly larvae, on a mayfly larvae, they would swim and we would loose it again. It looked and behaved totally normal except it was under a couple of inches of water. Finally we carefully "rescued it" and placed it in a dry collection vial. We watched it walk around for a couple of minutes and I took it home. When I got home (30 minutes) it was dead and shriveled up. As I understand it there are no true aquatic spiders - right? Delayed drowning? Maybe it just seemed to take 15 minutes to rescue it? Maybe it fell in off the bank and got trapped in the net somehow?

This image was shot with a flash through an inch of water.

Pinelands Short Course, Stream Quality Assessment, using Stream Visual Assessment Protocol (SVAP) and an Invertebrate Assessment.

Images of this individual: tag all
No true aquatic spiders - right?‏ - male No true aquatic spiders - right?‏ - male No true aquatic spiders - right?‏ - male

Aquatic spider?
I got here because I was trying to figure out whether I had seen an aquatic spider. I keep an aquarium outside and noticed a spider walking nimbly underwater. It was entirely submerged while I observed him walk around on the top and bottom of a slice of zucchini that I had put into the tank to feed some of the tiny crustaceans I keep in the tank. Can a terrestrial spider really maneuver so well underwater? The spider was about a 1/4 inch long and was probably a male based on what looked like male spider pedipalps. I'm in Orange County, CA. I doubt the spider was the same species as yours because it didn't have a light colored cephalathorax like yours but the shape was similar.

Moved
Moved from ID Request. Until the palp can be examined.

 
..
Hi John,

The specimen I have is quite faded now, but perhaps it is this one? Was in the small plastic vial...

In any event, the specimen I examined is another Grammonta gentilis.

-K

 
Maybe
wait until you see if there are any other Linyphiidae in the sample to be 100 percent sure, but this would have been one of them.

 
KMP-10152 John, unless you
KMP-10152

John, unless you think there is another possibility, I am linking my specimen ID to these images, which appear to be a reasonably close match.

-K

My lab processes hundreds of
My lab processes hundreds of benthic samples every year for aquatic bioassessment studies. We see many spiders in our samples as well as a variety of terrestrial insects and other arthropods. Depending upon your sampling method and collecting equipment, you can quite easily capture organisms that live or happened to be on riparian vegetation or even in the soil at the water's edge. I don't know the spiders at all. Perhaps someone else will be able to tell you about the habitat for your spider, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if it were merely an accidental in your sample.

I suspect your spider died because it got overheated in your vial. That happens to the stoneflies and caddisflies in my aspirator when I don't empty it regularly.

 
Thanks
I think you are probably right about the accidental nature of the collection. I thought it was interesting that it was able to behave so normally under water.
I kept the vial in my shirt pocket to protect it from the cold day, however that may have been the problem... going rapidly from 40 degrees to 90+.

Hmmm...
Well, I've seen little dwarf spiders and spiderlings of other species survive being in water for some time. I think it may have to do with their breathing processes, size and perhaps their ability to endure cold temperatures. Maybe the cold affects their metabolism enough to allow them to survive water longer? I'm sure it fell in, rather than actually living in the benthic zone itself. Maybe it wanted to be counted too? ^^

I'd love to do some stream surveys myself. This spring and summer I get to struggle through and sift through stinky, rich organic lake muck for a rare caddis fly species. No larvae have been positively identified, so it's not just an ordinary wild goose chase. It's a wild goose chase where I don't know what the goose looks like!

 
Thanks
Good luck with your hunt.

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