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| Golden Wheel Spider - Carparachne aureoflava | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jun 9 2014, 06:47 AM (1,999 Views) | |
| linnaeus1758 | Jun 9 2014, 06:47 AM Post #1 |
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Omnivore
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Golden Wheel Spider - Carparachne aureoflava![]() Scientific classification Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Arthropoda Class: Arachnida Order: Araneae Family: Sparassidae Genus: Carparachne Species: Carparachne aureoflava (Lawrence, 1966) The Wheel spider, Golden Wheel spider, or Dancing White lady spider, is a huntsman spider native to the Namib Desert of Southern Africa. The genus name is in honour of Bernard Carp, who was a South African scientist/naturalist who financed ornithological expeditions in southern Africa in the 1950's; the Greek arachne means spider. The spider escapes parasitic pompilid wasps by flipping onto its side and cartwheeling down sand dunes at speeds of up to 44 turns per second. Wheel spiders are up to 20 mm in size, with males and females the same size. The wheel spider is nocturnal, and a free-ranging hunter. Its bite is mildly venomous, but the spider is not known to be harmful to humans. ![]() The wheel spider does not produce a web. Its principal line of defence against predation is to bury itself in a silk-lined burrow extending 40–50 cm deep. During the process of digging its burrow, the spider can shift up to 10 litres, or 80,000 times its body weight, of sand. It is during the initial stages of building a burrow that the spider is vulnerable to pompilid wasps, which will sting and paralyze the spider before planting eggs in its body. If the spider is unable to fight a wasp off, and if it is on a sloped dune, it will use its rolling speed of 1 metre per second to escape. These nocturnal spiders are polyphagous predators that prey on more than 97 species of insects, arachnids and reptiles. Most prey are nocturnal or crepuscular tenebrionid beetles, moths and weevils. Diet varied regionally owing to faunal differences, but is relatively constant over seasons.
Edited by Taipan, Jun 9 2014, 01:52 PM.
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6:22 PM Jul 11