The bugbat, after a slow start (something ate the first pitchers as they started growing) has been producing giant pitchers. The smallest pitcher is twice the size of last year's. And as expected, the bugbat is capturing ants by the hundreds. There are ant ladders in most all of the pitchers.
But there is a thief in one of them. An opportunistic spider has set up shop in one of the pitchers. I spotted him (or her) on June 4, shortly after I got back in town and it's been there ever since.
I caught him in the act a couple of times. It was feeding on an ant when the pencam scared him off. An ant ladder can be seen in the distance. I didn't get any closer because I didn't want to disturb the spiderweb.
20190623_182404.mp4
Also, check out the lighting effects between pencam lights vs ambient sunlight. Just sunlight gives everything a green tone. The pencam lights reveals the inner leaf to be white, presumably from the slippery wax produced in Hooker Zone 3. Zone 4 shows up as dark green with the pencam lights. This is a handy way to visualize the zone 3-4 boundary.
Got a decent video of the spider eating another ant. This time, the spider wasn’t scared off by the pencam. The spider may not know what the pencam is, but it has figured out that it isn’t a threat so it now ignores it.
Also got a cool video of a “floating ant” Technically, it's trapped in a web, but if it’s not the focus, the webs disappear into unfocus. Kind of cool.
Reading other pitcher plant sites, I’ve seen some express concern that a spider in you pitcher is a bad thing. That it is eating all of the pitcher’s prey. Judging by the number of ants in the pitchers, there is enough food for an army of spiders. Besides, where does the ant go after the spider is full? Into the pitcher for leftovers. I don’t see a spider as anything different than the blobs (mites), midge and mosquito larva. It's just another commensal animal. (Now if the spider eats all of the mites, that’s a different story)
Not sure what species of spider it is. There are reports that crab spiders and lynx spiders frequently feed on sarracenia prey. (http://www.indefenseofplants.com/blog/2016/9/6/on-lynx-spiders-and-pitcher-plants http://www.sarracenia.com/faq/faq5520.html )
I think it might be a barn spider (Araneus cavaticus) I could be wrong, my spider training is limited to google and wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_spider
Speaking of spiders, here are a few articles on sarracenia eating spiders.
This post is getting long. More in the next post.