The Spider Factor
I end up losing a number of flies in my frog room. Not because of tanks that are not "fly proof", but intsead due to my clumsiness. I couldn't tell you how many times I have dropped open cultures on the floor, or knocked over my feeding cup while opening up a tank lid. That said, I do not have any fly or cricket problem in my frog room whatsoever. Instead... I *had* a SPIDER problem. Well, I wouldn't call it a problem, perhaps an infestation is a better description. They are similar in body shape to a black widow, though they are small, brown, and almost have a white frosting to their patterns. They are actually remarkably handsome arachnids. The infestaton, it used to be horrendous, then two three things happened. The first was of course, I managed to control my clumsiness to a degree, the second was that I kept a vigilant eye on egg sacs, and dusted more often in the awkward places. The truly interesting thn however, was the final factor in the spider control. That of course, was a NEW speceis of spider that set up shop in my frog room. These spiders are extremely spindly, wildly long legged, and small bodied. What blows my mind is how staggeringly they have controlled the poplulation of the other infesting species. These new spiders have webs riddled with corpses of the other spiders. Honestly, I have seen only ONE of the small brown spiders in the past few weeks..... whereas I would see tons of them every day. The thing that I like about the new spiders, is the fact that they are far more stationary, and their reproductive rate is FAR more controllable (so it seems at the moment anyway) than the old infestors. Actually, there are only five individuals of this new species that I have counted, and they have done the work in cleaning up my frog room of other spiders. It is quite remarkable... Anyway, I will end my rambling.
