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Location of Arenac County in MI.
Public domain map by David Benbennick. |
A recent trip to Arenac County, Michigan provided me with the unusual opportunity to search for the introduced European spider
Ozyptila praticola (Thomisidae) in a region where it has, to my knowledge,
not been documented. The likelihood of its presence in Michigan seemed high, however, since it's been found in the neighboring province of Ontario (
Dondale and Redner 1978), and in the states of Illinois (
Steffen and Draney 2009) and New York (
Ramseyer 2015).
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Ventral side of female O. praticola
sifted from oak litter in Arenac County,
Michigan. |
The ground-level microhabitats that I sampled with
O. praticola in mind included fallen conifer cones, the undersides of old boards laying on the ground, and oak leaf litter near buildings. All sample sites were in a semi-suburbanized rural stretch of the Saginaw Bay (Lake Huron) coast.
Surprisingly, I found an adult female
O. praticola under the first board I turned over. In addition, I sifted mature specimens from two separate deposits of oak litter. A juvenile
Ozyptila sp. was also present in the fallen cones. In short, not only are
O. praticola present at this Michigan site, but they're common enough to be easily found in at least two microhabitats.
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