Nothing but spiders for miles and miles

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This female golden orb-weaver spider, and her much-smaller mate are enjoying a tasty cicada caught in their web, near the deck of the Arboretum’s Cypress Cove. Patricia Drackett
A web in the Crosby Arboretum’s Woodland Exhibit sparkles with morning dew. Patricia Drackett

September 1, 2010

By Patricia Drackett, Senior Curator, Crosby Arboretum The Picayune Item Picayune Item Wed Sep 01, 2010, 02:37 PM CDT

PICAYUNE —

Miles and miles of spiders are back at the Arboretum.

Have you seen the spider show on I-59? I first noticed this spectacular three-mile display of spider webs last August, while driving north between the Honey Island Swamp exit and the Pearl River Turnaround. On the east side of the interstate, between the three lower utility lines, are “two stories” of spider webs. With drops of dew caught by the early morning sunlight, at highway speeds, the sight is much like shimmering bars of music. Do the math – every five or ten feet for about three miles, stacked two stories high, that adds up to a lot of spiders

These spiders are most likely golden orb-weavers, also called “banana spiders”. If you need a positive I.D., sorry, someone other than me will have to skinny up one of those power poles for a closer look. At the clip of seventy miles an hour, they certainly appear to be the same species we encounter on the paths at the Crosby Arboretum. But, the faint-hearted can rest assured - by the time visitors venture down our pathways, grounds manager Terry Johnson will have made his morning rounds on the golf cart and cleared away any webs, both accidentally and on purpose.

I invite you for a moment to set aside any preconceived notions, and ponder for a moment the incredible talents of these creatures. Golden orb-weavers are so named because of the beautiful golden silk with which they weave their webs, not the color of the spider. Their genus name Nephila originates from an ancient Greek word that means “fond of spinning”. Search the internet for a photo of the beautiful golden cloth which was woven from spider silk and exhibited last year by the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and I guarantee that your opinion of these spiders will be forever altered.

The silk from more than one million female golden-orb spiders was used to produce this intricate 11-foot long piece of fabric. Seventy people spent four years collecting enough golden orb-weaver spiders from telephone poles in Madagascar to produce the silk.

After learning about a spider silk-extracting machine invented by a French missionary in Madagascar before the turn of the century, a textile expert named Simon Peers successfully re-created the machine, which compresses the abdomens of 24 spiders at once. As the silk is extracted from their bodies, it is wound onto a reel. After “milking”, the spiders are released so that they can regenerate their silk, which takes about a week. Apparently, no spiders were harmed in the making of this cloth!

The appearance of the spider webs on the utility lines, and along the Arboretum’s pathways, are a harbinger of our Bugfest on September 17 and 18.

For more information on this two-day family event, see the program calendar at the Crosby Arboretum website, HYPERLINK "http://www.crosbyarboretum.msstate.edu" www.crosbyarboretum.msstate.edu.

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