Subject: Pretty Spider
Geographic location of the bug: Antigua Guatemala
Date: 03/25/2019
Time: 12:57 PM EDT
Your letter to the bugman: Hey there!
This gorgeous spider has been hanging out in my shower for the past 3 weeks. It doesn’t move, nor does it flinch when I move. It’s just been growing (look at size difference of body from week 1 to now)
How you want your letter signed: Leilani
Dear Leilani,
This really is a beautiful spider. It looked vaguely familiar to us, and we searched for spiders with long spinnerets, and discovered the Trapped in Nature & Exploration Malaysian blog with an entry about Tree trunk spiders belong[ing] to the Family Hersiliidae. We have a Two-Tailed Spider from Indonesia in our archive, so we searched BugGuide for North American representatives, and there discovered Neotama mexicana which ranges from “Cameron and Hidalgo Counties of southmost Texas, south to S. Amer” and the “Perch head down on tree trucks or stone walls.” BugGuide also notes: “When an insect approaches the waiting spider, the spider jumps over the prey. The spider then spreads silk by rapidly running in circles with the spinnerets toward the prey. When the prey is completely wrapped, it is bitten and eaten. They are amazingly fast. No snare is built.”