October 06, 1995 - Glebe Report

Glebe Questions
Spying the spiders
By
Clyde
Sanger
Take heart, all ye who have waded
through Jacques Parizeau's mockpoetic
Preamble and cunningly
ambiguous Question! Here, from
the brain (in the age of coputers
one cannot say 'pen' any more) of
Boyce Richardson, on Second Avenue,
comes a pure and clear Question,
or set of questions, and a
quite beautiful Preamble to it.
You may think I am ducking out of
answers, as Jean Chrétien has been
doing, by quoting Boyce at length. I
promise you, and him, that the answers
will come in due time. But in
the meanwhile let me give you the
elegant words of this early morning
walker and budding naturalist.
"Dear Clyde: Having wrestled the
ducks to the ground with such effortless
authority [see the Glebe
Report of November 4, 1994], you
will no doubt be chomping at the
bit to take on the spiders. Viz:
"One of the unheralded glories of
the Glebe is the network of spiders'
webs that is constructed along the
length and breadth of the canal
railings in the summer. On a dull
day one can walk by without noticing
them. But, if one takes a walk
on a sunny early morning, as I
usually do, when they are backlit
(as they say in the movie business)
by the rising sun, they present an
absolutely glorious spectacle. They
seem to be at their peak about mid-
August, but have declined noticeably
in the last ten days or so as
colder weather, wind and rain have
taken their toll, and apparently
sent your fair-weather spider scurrying
for warmer cover.
"There are literally thousands of
these webs, of all shapes and sizes,
strung along the railings. Many of
them extend from the top of the
pillars to the ground, a distance of
about four feet, and halfway along
to the next pillar, so that their total
extent could be as much as 12
square feet or so. Others are
bunched in tight, cylindrical
shapes that look impenetrable.
Some have a whole space to themselves,
others are grouped in layers
of two or three webs about a couple
of inches apart.
"They appear to have been built
in response to a business opportunity
presented by the clouds of
small white insects (whose exis-
tence is no doubt familiar to every
cyclist and walker) that gather
along the recreation paths. Tens of
thousands of these hapless creatures
end their lives in these webs.
"My question is, what kind of
spiders are these, and what are
these little insects? Why do the
insects accumulate in clouds close
to the water? They seem to like the
water so much that you can avoid
most of them by simply walking in
the lane furthest from the water.
Why do spiders make such a variety
of differently-shaped webs? Is this
done by different species of spider,
or what?
"You will observe that I am
working from a very profound ignorance
of spiders and insects, but
you can't help wondering. I am
confident you'll come up with some
mind-blowing information to equal
your amazing revelation [see the
Glebe Report of February 10, 1995)
that black and grey squirrels come
from the same nests. Who would
have thought it?"
Isn't it great to get letters like
that? There's more to Boyce's letter,
mainly about canal ducklings.
(There was an annual convention of
mallards, with some 50 delegates
foregathering in the Arboretum
creek in mid-September, which I am
sorry he missed.) But let's stick to
spiders.
Of course they deserve a whole
column of answers. After all, there
are 30,000 species of them worldwide,
divided into some 105 families.
They get very precise at the
Canadian Museum of Nature, and
tell you there are exactly 1,256
species in Canada, in 33 families
(of which only 12 are really worth
noting). And they add that "spiders
were already well established
and diversified in the Carboniferous
period, about 300 million years
ago." As Boyce would say, who
would have thought it?
Anyway, with those numbers and
those aeons of evolution, there will
be plenty of tales to spin. Which
we'll do next issue, with the help of
Robert Leuenberger at the museum.
But, Boyce, to stir your anticipation
I should add that spiders are not
related to insects (or, for that matter,
to squirrels). Their closest
relatives are - scorpions.
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October 6, 1995 Glebe Report-13