4-Jun-2011 Table Mountain and Teanaway Campground, Washington

Site locations (click to enlarge)

Back on the beat with Rod Crawford, I had a very busy day tapping fallen pine cones at three elevations on Table Mountain, which is located north of Ellensburg, and in the Teanaway forest, located north of Cle Elum.

Reecer Canyon site (3600')

Reecer Canyon was my first site of the day and the lowest elevation (3600') site I sampled on Table Mtn.  Tapping 50 ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) cones in this mixed Pseudotsuga menziesii-P. ponderosa forest got me 7 juvenile spiders, mostly lycosids and the "pine cone spider" Euryopis formosa (Theridiidae).

Table Mtn site (5400')

P. ponderosa cones in Reecer Canyon

Rod was eager to get to a higher elevation site to augment a previous sample he'd taken there, so we leapfrogged what would later be my mid-elevation site and drove as far up Table Mountain as the snow pack would allow, 5400'.  Although this put me above my coveted P. ponderosa zone, the subalpine parkland supported scattered lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) trees, a species whose cones I hadn't yet tapped.

Fallen P. contorta cones on Table Mtn
with spring-beauty (Claytonia sp.)

Downed P. contorta branch on Table
Mtn with attached cones

Pinus contorta cones are "persistent", meaning they aren't shed annually as are P. ponderosa cones, but may remain attached to the tree for years.  Nevertheless, with some hunting I was able to find 30 cones to tap.  Some I found on the ground, while others were still attached to fallen branches and so weren't in direct contact with litter or the ground.  Those 30 cones were small and often only partially open, but they produced 9 spiders and 3 species, and provided the first record of the presence of spiders in fallen P. contorta cones.

Reecer Creek Road site (4800')

P. ponderosa cone at Reecer Creek Rd

Retracing our steps, we dropped back down into the P. ponderosa zone and stopped along Reecer Creek Road to take a mid-elevation sample (4800').  Tapping 51 cones I collected 5 spiders and 3 species including a rare dictynid collected in Washington only twice previously.

P. ponderosa cones near
Teanaway Campground

Site near Teanaway Campground

With too much delicious daylight left to head home, we made one more stop, near Teanaway Campground.  The 103 P. ponderosa cones I tapped weren't terribly productive, producing only 10 spiders from 2 species.  But one was a rare, undescribed Neon sp. jumping spider (Salticidae), and seven were photogenic E. formosa juveniles, so I was a happy camper.

Late afternoon sun brings out the
chestnut highlights in this E. formosa

View of an E. formosa's
silver-lined "heart" markings

Be sure to check out Rod's take on the day!

26-May-2011 Green Lake Park, Seattle, Washington

Bad site: Cone microhabitat buried
under wood chips

Good site: Cone microhabitat
unadulterated

Unable to coordinate with Rod Crawford for another joint collecting trip this month, I settled for a return to Seattle's Green Lake Park to tap cones under a different stand of trees than previously.  Since I'd taken my first sample there back in March, groundskeepers had ruined the fallen cone microhabitat under most tree stands by blanketing the ground with wood chips.  Luckily I found one mixed conifer stand growing next to busy Aurora Ave. that contained white pines (Pinus strobus or P. monticola) and also had been spared the wood chip treatment.

Fallen cones aplenty

Juvenile Enoplognatha sp. in prey
capture web between cone scales

Fallen cones were plentiful, as were arachnids within them.  Tapping 52 cones I collected 27 spiders (wow!), 13 of them the introduced invasive from Europe, Lepthyphantes tenuis (Linyphiidae).  According* to Rod, this species was introduced into Seattle in 1950 but "balloons massively" and so "is now found throughout the Pacific Northwest".  The species does seem to have settled nicely into the city.  An additional 7 spiders were juvenile Enoplognatha sp. (Theridiidae), probably ovata, also introduced from Europe.

Just a few of the many, many juvenile
Paroligolophus sp. harvestmen present

Besides spiders, the cones were also loaded with juvenile harvestmen.  So many, in fact, that I eventually stopped counting, but I estimated about 100 individuals.  Rod identified them as Paroligolophus sp. (Phalangiidae), probably agrestis.  Paroligolophus sp. is a genus native to Europe.

Although the species composition was different this day than in my 25 March 2011 sample, both fallen cones samples contained mainly introduced species.

*Crawford, Rod. 2006. Terrestrial invertebrates: spiders. In: Boersma, P.D., Reichard, S & A.N. Van Buren (eds.) Invasive species in the Pacific Northwest, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 285 pp.

An inquisitive female mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)

18-May-2011 Wenas Valley, Washington

Site location

Rod Crawford and I were finally able to join forces again, and also had the pleasure of Jerry Austin's company on this trip.  After a productive first stop at Lady Bug Canyon to help Rod round out a partial sample taken there decades earlier, we proceeded into the higher elevations of Wenas Valley until we found some accessible ponderosa pines (Pinus ponderosa).

Sample site

Fallen cone microhabitat

The roadside pines here had dropped so many cones that before I knew it I'd tapped 111 of them.  I collected 28 spiders and 5 species. Among them was a male specimen of a very rare, undescribed jumping spider from the genus Habronattus (Salticidae), found only once previously in Washington.  Present also was another state rarity, Meioneta cf. delphina (Linyphiidae).  In contrast to these rarities, the "pine cone spider" Euryopis formosa (Theridiidae) made up a full half of the sample. 

The beautiful (and prickly) ponderosa pine cone

9-May-2011 Wachusett Reservoir, Thomas Basin, Massachusetts

Site location

During a quick business trip to Worcester, Massachusetts I took the opportunity to tap some fallen eastern white pine (Pinus strobus) cones in their native range.  Readers will recall that just one month prior, I had tapped the fallen cones of P. strobus in Green Lake Park in Seattle, Washington, where it is an introduced species.  Little did I know on this day that I would be returning to Wachusett Reservoir one year later to conduct a 6-month survey of cone spiders there!

Sample site

Understory thick with maple saplings

My sample site was located at the edge of the pine-maple forest across the street from West Boylston's Old Stone Church on Route 140 and the reservoir's Thomas Basin.  The understory was so thick with maple saplings that I frequently got entangled in them.  Only belatedly did I realized that poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) was a major component of the groundcover.  Lucky for me, it hadn't yet leafed out and I apparently didn't bruise any buds or woody stems, because I escaped without a rash.

The fallen cone microhabitat

Since I had no net or pillow case with me, I improvised by tapping each cone with a stick over a white groundcloth.  Tapping 65 cones, I collected 6 juvenile harvestmen and 5 juvenile spiders.  One of the spiders was a Phrurotimpus sp. (Phrurolithidae), a genus I'd later find during my 2012 survey to be one of the most common in Wachusett Reservoir cones.

Five juvenile spiders from 65 cones was not exactly an earth-shattering finding, but it was enough to put Massachusetts on the World Map Of Pine Cone Spiders.

2-May-2011 Gilhouley Road, Hood River, Oregon

Site location

A most amazing sight awaits visitors to the small city of Hood River, Oregon.  Looking north, one sees the gleaming, rounded cap of Mount Adams.  Looking south, one sees the pointy peak of Mount Hood.  For a former flatlander like me, to be bookended by two snow-capped stratovolcanoes like that is a wonder.

A slightly more diminutive wonder awaits those in Hood River who look down: pine cone spiders.  This field day was my first and so far only time tapping ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) cones in Oregon, but it was enough to put the state on the World Map of Pine Cone Spiders.

Sample site

Cones in clearcut amid Garry oak leaves

The sample site was a working forest of ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziezii) containing scattered, shrub-sized Garry oaks (Quercus garryana).  I tapped ponderosa cones that had accumulated along the roadside as well as cones I found lying in an old clearcut.

Roadside cones illuminated by late
afternoon sun

Ebo evansae tapped from a cone

Tapping 99 ponderosa cones I collected 10 spiders from 3 species.  We were excited to find that one of these was a female Ebo evansae (Thomidisae), a species of crab spider with only one record in the Burke Museum's spider database.  But that is a database of Washington spiders.  Perhaps the species is more common in Oregon, where it has been documented in the northeastern part of the state.

Hungry ticks waiting to snag a blood meal from passing deer or a spider collector.

28-Apr-2011 Ginkgo Petrified Forest, Washington

Site location (click to enlarge)

Ginkgo Petrified Forest is located at the intersection of Interstate 90 and the Columbia River in Vantage, Washington, in a mostly treeless region of the state.  The nearest naturally-occurring ponderosa pines (Pinus ponderosa) grow about 35 miles to the west in the foothills of the Cascade Range.  Yet a lone ponderosa pine, perhaps planted for shade, stands in front of the Ginkgo Petrified Forest's ranger station, dropping cones onto the Oregon grape (Mahonia aquifolium), pine needles and rocks below.

Pine cone beneath Oregon grape
in full flower

Lots of old webs on these cones

Tapping 50 of those cones netted (pun intended) me only two spiders, a male and a juvenile Sitticus dorsatus (Salticidae).  This species of jumping spider is uncommon in Washington state - there were only five records in the Burke Museum's spider database previous to this one.  Too bad then that a third specimen I tapped from a cone got away! Despite the low specimen count in this sample, the frequency with which I found old webs on the cones indicated lots of past spider activity.

Showy phlox (Phlox speciosa) growing through tall sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata)

25-Apr-2011 Chelan Butte & Lake Chelan State Park, Washington

Sample sites (click to enlarge)

The summit of Chelan Butte offers towering views of the Columbia River to the south and east, and of Lake Chelan to the northwest.  It also offers a scattered grove of ponderosa pines (Pinus ponderosa) and a modest number of fallen cones.

Chelan Butte sample site
overlooking Columbia River

At this early season and high elevation (3,700 feet), however, those cones didn't offer much in the way of spiders: 3 juveniles and 1 species (Titanoeca nigrella, family Titanoecidae) from 38 tapped cones, or an average of only 0.08 spiders per cone. 

Lake Chelan State Park sampling site

About 2,500 feet below, however, I tapped 31 spiders and 8 species from 80 ponderosa cones outside Lake Chelan State Park (elevation 1,190 ft), an average of 0.4 spiders per cone! We had seen a similar elevational contrast the previous day at Nason Creek Rest Area & Southwest Leavenworth.  Besides spring being noticeably more advanced at the Lake Chelan State Park site, the vegetation there was also structurally more complex than on the summit of Chelan Butte.

A pearl of great price was hidden away in this cone: a spider's egg sac.