We left early, north on I-15 from San Diego on a trip collecting trapdoor spiders for Jordan Satler's thesis. This was my first trip focusing on spiders and first time to see trapdoor spiders in the wild. They are amazingly fantastic creatures; large, strong, and handsome. It struck me very alien, spending life in the same sunless silken sock-shaped burrow under the ground in solitude; some of these species can live a couple of decades. My advisor Marshal Hedin enjoys sharing images of these beasts. I've included a couple of pictures here and I've linked the species names with images Marshal has posted to Flickr.
Jordan and I, Marshal, and twelve-year-old arachnid enthusiast Jake stopped to pick up Jim Starret, a Ph.D. student at UC Riverside and former undergrad in the Hedin lab. Our focal species was Aliatypus thompsoni, but both Marshal and Jim have research interest in many types of fossorial spiders. Our general route today was to work our way west through the San Gabriel Mountains. We stopped and collected in five localities in Lytle Creek basin, south of Mount Baldy, and in the Big Tujunga drainage. Mountain Chaparral was the dominant habitat. A white-flowered Ceanothus pleased my eyes and California Sagebrush pleased my chemoreceptors. I was definitely the ignoramus of the group and didn't catch a single trapdoor spider all day, but I found some dead-end burrows. I worked on it. I watched the others and I saw intact burrows. With a small twig I lifted a hinged door, noting the amount of silk used in its construction, and setting it back to tightly rest atop the burrow. Fortunately, the others had more success and we secured our sample size from each locality.
Of course I got a little side-tracked by the leaf litter. Flipping rocks and woody debris and sifting oak litter turned up a couple species of millipeds. I was hoping to find the slug Anadenulus cockerelli, known from the San Gabriels, but which hasn't been seen, as far as I know anywhere, in over 60 years. I haven't brought it back, but I haven't given up. I did find some Helminthoglypta which I haven't yet identified. Searching the litter turned up arachnids too. A Globipes harvestmen was fairly common and I collected a couple spiders including a Megahexura under a large piece of woody debris, and a Kukulcania that had built a silken structure in a rolled piece of bark.
Kulkulcania
The trapdoors of trapdoor spiders aren't like the ones that allow stage actors to disappear and drunkards to get kidnapped to sea. Instead of the prey falling through a trapdoor and into the hole, the spider comes to the top of the burrow at night waiting for an unsuspecting meal. When an item passes in front of the door, the spider lunges up and out of the burrow capturing the prey; there's a good couple shots of these doors here and here. And here is a video showing how fast they pop up out of these things.
We drove that night to Ventura and played catch with a football in the Motel 6 parking lot.
16 February 2009
Marshal opened the hotel door wide. The sun had not yet replaced the night and it was pouring rain. Gusts of cold air leapt into the room as the rain pushed down. "Get up!" We hit an eastern locality in the Santa Monica Mountains by 0720 and I quickly collected three Aliatypus thompsoni including the only adult male of the trip. These were my lifer trapdoor spiders, meaning the first time I had ever seen them in the field when I was the collector. They were to be my only Aliatypus of the trip, but at least I didn't get skunked.
We collected up the Santa Clara River near Santa Paula where we likely all got poison oak (nothing has shown yet). We drove a steep muddy road into the Los Padres National Forest. This area is a release site for the imperiled California Condor, but dense fog and steady rain limited how far we could see. We were at least hoping for Mountain Quail, but had to be satisfied with a flock of juncos, a couple White-crowned Sparrows, and Wrentit song. The site was very muddy and I washed my shoes and the bottom of my pants in an ephemeral creek. We continued up the Santa Clara to a site near Val Verde before hoping on Interstate 5 heading north up the Grapevine. We didn't make it far. I-5 was closed due to snow-levels at 3500 ft. It took an hour to get off the freeway. We started playing a game where we would rotate through the alphabet and have to give an arthropod family for whichever letter we got. We went through the alphabet twice and I did fairly well; I pulled out Xystodemidae when I got X. However, I was sorting some millipeds from Idaho last night when I discovered that Keypolydesmidae is fictional; Kepolydesmus is in Nearctodesmidae. I here forfeit any claim to winning that particular name game - winner goes to Marshal. We finally got off the freeway in Castaic; we had to go through a motel parking lot to avoid CHP blockades and follow Ridge Route Rd up into the hills. We found beautiful localities on Templin Hwy and Hard Luck Rd. The snow set off the blue in the Manzanita leaves; the red-tipped chamise helped accent the landscape. Amazingly, I thought, Jim collected a Solifugae digging in the ground under the snow at Hard Luck. I spotted a large Bothriocyrtum door at the Templin Hwy locale and dug out a huge female. She now lives with Adrienne and I; at least she will for a while. I'll keep the tag with her so she can join a collection someday when she passes. No names yet, maybe Rio? From Bothriocyrtum... any ideas? Here's a picture of her.
Bothriocyrtum californicum
Here a list from the trip:
Spiders
Amaurobiidae
--Callobius
--Aliatypus thompsoni
Ctenizidae
--Hebestatis - probably
Cyrtaucheniidae
Dictynidae
--Yorima
Filistatidae
--Kukulcania
Hahniidae
--Calymmaria
Leptonetidae
--Archoleptoneta
Mecicobothriidae
Plectreuridae
--Kibromoa
--Plectreurys
Harvestmen
Nemastomatidae
--Ortholasma
Nemastomatidae
--Ortholasma
Phalangodidae
Protolophidae
--Protolophus
Sclerosomatidae
--Globipes
Sclerosomatidae
--Globipes
