Bear River Bottoms

Last Sunday, Ryan O'Donnell and I went to the Bear River Bottoms, part of a wetland area that has recently been dedicated as a conservation easement. The vegetation was structurally simple along the part of the trail we covered, consisting mainly of grasses (Reed Canarygrass) and herbs, with a few scattered trees (mainly Russian Olive) and hardly any shrubs.

 Bear River Bottoms

While Ryan searched for birds, I searched for spiders. A close inspection of the Reed Canarygrass  flowers revealed the presence of dictynids, which appeared to like these pink flowers for their webs. Since dictynids build tangle-webs, they require substrates that can hold a three-dimensional web. Dictynids are also known to prefer the tips of plants in general. Many of the Reed Canarygrass flowers contained one individual dictynid in a web. I had to poke the spiders gently out of their webs so that they would appear in the pictures. Given the abundance of this invasive grass, I quickly realized that this spider must be extremely abundant at this site.

Male dictynid on Reed Canarygrass

Female dictynid on Reed Canarygrass

Dictynids were also present in Canadian Thistle (yet another invasive plant), among other plants. I had a hard time taking pictures because of hundreds of hungry mosquitoes. I also had to deal with ant nests, which were often hard to notice because of the grass.

 Dictynid on thistle

Ant attack while taking the picture above

Dictynid in her web

Hike to the "billboards" on the peak just east of Logan

Earlier this month, I hiked up a trail that starts along the Shoreline trail at the mouth of Green Canyon, up  to the top of the mountain just east of Logan, where two billboard-looking structures face each other. It was a little steep at times and I lost the trail near the top, but it was really worth the hike, with a nice view of Logan from up there.

 

View of Logan from the lower part of the trail

I had some nice encounters along the trail, including Sagebrush Lizards, a Turkey Vulture and a couple of American Kestrels. My first spider was a little salticid which was hard to notice against the pale rock it was sitting on:

 

Further up the trail I found another jumping spider, also on a rock. He was a little shy, and he quickly bounced off the rock to hide under a plant. He hung from the plant upside-down for a while, making sure he could still observe the suspicious camera. 

There was still some snow close to the top, where the billboards are located.  I noticed a wolf spider next to a small patch of snow. Like jumping spiders, lycosids do not build webs to catch prey. Instead, they rely on their good eyesight to actively hunt.

On my way down the trail, not far from the Shoreline trail, I noticed a Phidippus johnsoni, a pretty jumping spider with metallic green chelicerae (these are the mouthparts). I always enjoy looking at spiders in this genus as they can get quite big and typically have these pretty iridescent chelicerae. Phidippus johnsoni has a bright red abdomen, hence its name "Redbacked Jumping Spider".

Spiders at the USU Green Canyon Field Station

Yesterday, after a big lunch at Tandoori Oven, Lori Spears and I went to the USU field station at the mouth of Green Canyon to search for spiders in sagebrush shrubs. Lori and I have spent many hours in the field studying spiders in sagebrush habitat for our graduate research, but we felt we needed more spider pictures for future research presentations, including our defense.

We probably didn't chose the best time of day (it was quite hot) but we couldn't wait to look for spiders. However, we did find some jumping spiders (Sassacus papenhoei, Pelegrina aenola), crab spiders (Xysticus spp., Misumena vatia), a theridiid (Theridion petraeum), an araneid (Metepeira foxi) and a philodromid (Philodromus histrio). I had a hard time taking pictures of the jumping spiders, because most of them were still immature and quite active. However, I did find a Pelegrina aenola that allowed me to get close enough.

 

Pelegrina jumping spider

Metepeira in her web

I found a male goldenrod crab spider (Misumena vatia) on the tip a sagebrush branch. People are usually more familiar with the female of this species, who may be white or yellow depending on the flower she is sitting on. This male had produced a floating line of silk from his spinnerets, his posture much like that of an immature spider about to balloon. When his line caught the branch tip of a neighboring shrub, he turned around, held the line with one of his front legs, and pulled it as if checking that it was safely attached . A second later, he was traveling along the silk line to another shrub.