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A fishing spider, Dolomedes
© Kefyn Catley |
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Yes, They’re Everywhere
If you walk into a forest, spiders will inhabit every layer, starting deep in the leaf litter, where they spin minute webs across tiny fragments of dried leaves. That’s also a habitat for active hunters, who don’t spin webs. The ground layer is home to running spiders that hunt actively during the day and night (different species at different times). Others hang out under stones and logs. The shrub layer is where we see the familiar gossamer webs, most commonly orb and sheet webs. Sometimes hundreds can be found in a small area. The bark of trees is another habitat for many kinds of spiders, some heavily camouflaged to resemble lichens or the bark itself. Within the cracks of bark live web-spinning spiders; underneath the bark live some flattened spiders. How flat? “As flat as if somebody had dropped an encyclopedia on them,” says Kefyn Catley, arachnologist and educator at the American Museum of Natural History, who has studied spider biodiversity on four continents.
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