2012: Send us your Brown Widow egg sacs!

We are embarking on another project looking at brown widow egg productivity over the course of the summer. We are interested in egg sacs again, however, because we are interested in freshly laid eggs, we are asking that you only send in egg sacs that were collected near a live female and please mail them in as soon as you collect them because they only stay as eggs for about one week. This will prevent the mailing of egg sacs that are old and have hatched out which would be a waste of effort on both your part and our part. Also, we do NOT NEED SPIDERS, just the egg sacs. If you send the sacs, they need to be in some container like an amber prescription pill vial or small tupperware-like container. Do not just drop them into an envelope because the egg sacs will get squashed thinner than a piece of shaved roast beef. Therefore, if you have interest in contributing to our research in 2012, please send the spiked brown widow egg sacs to the following address with the following information: date of collection and in what city the egg sacs were found. Our study will run from June to October. After October, brown widows should not be laying many eggs and also, the students involved in the projects will be returning to school and we will have a reduction in people power.

Also, please be aware that Rick Vetter will be officially retiring from UCR at the end of June 2012 but will continue to carry out spider research. However, he will be doing much of this work out of his home and will not be on campus so please don’t call and expect him to be available at UCR. Email will be the best method of contact.

To see the results on Summer 2011 Brown Widow research, click here