starting the year off with arachnids

Eight days in and 2021 is already shaping up to be a mess, but at least I can rely on bugs to be there when I need them most. On New Year’s Day I took a drive up to Molino Basin on the Mount Lemmon Highway; my first spider of the year was a Kukulcania arizonica cuddled up under a rock. At times I envy these critters and how secretive, quiet, and reclusive they are. Oh, to go months at a time without seeing anyone, sleeping the days away until there are are better days to be had! It’s certainly a strategy for survival: spiders have existed on this planet, relatively unchanged, for hundreds of millions of years. Humans will never lay claim to that feat!

Another arachnid find that day was a lovely female Phidippus carneus. She wasn’t very pleased about being disturbed (I don’t blame her!), so after I took some photos, I carefully ushered her back under her rock. Over the past few winters here, I have found plenty of female Phidippus sp. hibernating under rocks in their silken cocoons. They have already mated, the males long since perished before the colder weather, and they will wait until it gets warmer before they start laying eggs. Phidippus spiderlings will start to become quite visible in the foliage come mid-late spring.

Yesterday afternoon I returned to the Mount Lemmon Highway, this time driving up to about 8000′ elevation, across the road from the burn scar I’ve previously written about. This area was also burned by the Bighorn Fire, and to a far greater extent. Despite that, I still found plenty of critters under charred rocks and logs — centipedes, millipedes, beetles, wolf spiders, and, best of all, pseudoscorpions.

There’s a furrow in the earth that runs downhill, over rocky slides and channels that, during the spring melt, is probably gushing with water. It’s bordered on either side by steep slopes, where tall, fire-damaged ponderosa pines reach toward the heavens and mountain yuccas grow nearby, looking out-of-place amongst the fallen pine needles. When I visited yesterday, this channel was clogged with debris: fallen trees, clumps of earth, boulders — the result of mudslides after the fire. I followed this miniature canyon for quite a ways before heading back, and realized I hadn’t turned any rocks in a while. I immediately started to find pseudoscorpions, and they were big — for pseudoscorpions, anyway. The length of their bodies was approximately 2.5-3.0mm, not including their long, clawed pedipalps. I’m assuming they were all the same species, though there was some variation in color.

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I’m hoping to at least get a solid genus, if not family, on these guys. I was delighted at how large and colorful they were — a real treat to observe.

This year may not be starting off well (massive understatement!) but hopefully I will have more adventures like this soon.