Here are a couple of Dolomedes species:

True wolf spiders (Lycosidae) are a bit furrier and have the eyes arranged in a distinctive pattern: the four anterior eyes are in a straight row, while the larger posterior eyes are arranged in a quadrangle. Dolomedes and other pisaurids have two slightly curved rows of four eyes each (you can see it pretty well in the second picture).

Sorry for the tangent, I'll let you get back to fish now!

The second photo looks similar to a common one I was catching, except that the brown on the ones I caught was darker - almost a black, and the white abdominal band was more.. ventral, I guess, closer to the top of the abdomen and less around the side.

And that first photo looks a lot like the very common spiders we find all over Georgia, many of which were in (well, around and near, anyway) the creek as well.

The second species is D. triton; the abdominal markings are quite variable. The first is D. tenebrosus; they seem to spend more time near water than actually in it.


Todd- thanks, I'll have to try that. My lamprey is an adult Lampetra, so no transforming or attaching for him!

I must say I'm surprised your sallies survived without live foods; I've had no luck with plethodontids taking prepared food, though newts and ambystomatids will.

I must say I'm surprised your sallies survived without live foods; I've had no luck with plethodontids taking prepared food, though newts and ambystomatids will.

It may be related to the current in the tank. There's a whole lot of things that were in there and thriving that haven't done well for many people. As I'm building my project, there's three things that pop up in every aquatic study... Substrate compositon, depth and discharge (which support my hypotheses). Depth may not be that important in an aquarium, but I've found substrate comp and discharge to be extremely important in developing environmental gradients for all these benthic oriented critters to be successful, esp in the confines of 5 walls of glass.

I'm not sure if you've done the same with plethos or desmos, but it may warrant a try if you haven't. I also wonder about the combined effect of having the fish. Perhaps they're less picky about what they grab when fish are present, thus training them to the prepared foods more efficiently.

Some things to think about

Todd

Edited by farmertodd, 09 July 2008 - 12:37 PM.