![]() ![]() Pholcidae (Cellar Spiders), Holocnemes pluchei Common spiders, building messy webs everywhere here in the Central Valley. Most people misidentify them as "Daddy Longlegs." I asked Brian Carroll (Spiderman) if there was anything interesting or odd about this spider. Here's what he had to say: Holocnemes pluchei showed up in this area in the late 70's, an import from the Mediterranean. Devin (Brian's brother and fellow arachnologist) had it in Northwest Visalia, but I didn't have it in Southwest Visalia. We noticed that the same nitch in my yard was filled with black widows, so I carried a female with eggs from his place to mine. Within a short time, I had lots of Holocnemes, and very few black widows. About that time, we had the invasion of the western grape-leaf skeletinizer moth. I tried feeding them to other spiders, without success. (If I flung one into the web of a funnel web weaver, the spider would run out, bite it, step back and vomit.) However, the Holocnemes would eat them as fast as I could fling them into its web, or store them for eating later. Does that qualify as odd? (Gotta love these guys!)
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