Mixed feelings about spider on Zkittlez clone

Last night I watched a brown widow catch and kill a grass spider that was 2.5 - 3x its size. It was a pretty intense battle that took about 12 minutes, but in the end the widow prevailed. What amazed me was how methodical the widow was, it would come in and wrap a web around the legs, back off and cinch it up, then go back for another wrap until it had almost fully immobilized the grass spider, then it was just a matter of biting it a few times and it was a wrap. Spiders freak me out, but I'd be lying if I said they weren't fascinating.

My little guard spider had a web spanning 3 plants over 50ft of web. Little dude must be so busy all day.

Sithlord88 said:

My little guard spider had a web spanning 3 plants over 50ft of web. Little dude must be so busy all day.View attachment 4194010

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So spider mites are so hated because of their webbing right? Wouldn't spider webs cause the same hate/issues? I love spiders in and around the plants, but when they web out in my buds it's time to go. Not kill, just encouraged to move on so i can clean the web out.

Most of the spiders i have dont make webs like mites do. Plus the spider webs are easy to clean off.

Sithlord88 said:

Most of the spiders i have dont make webs like mites do. Plus the spider webs are easy to clean off.

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interesting. the spider webs on my buds were more of a tunnel variety. the web was very fine but extensive. Thought it might have been a spider mite nest, but then i found the perp in the bottom of his funnel.

socaljoe said:

Take this for what it's worth...

The brown recluse's range doesn't extend anywhere near the Pacific Northwest. This is a distribution map of the brown and different species related to the brown recluse:
View attachment 4191011

In addition, they don't build huge funnel webs like you're describing. The brown recluse builds webs in out of the way, hidden locations generally.

Don't take my word though, all my info comes from a recognized arachnologist from the University of California Riverside.

http://spiders.ucr.edu/brs.html

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not quite sure where this map source is from but we DEFINETLY have brown recluse here in idaho