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