by Eric Neubauer
Wolf spiders can be a winter activity; just use a headlamp at night when it’s relatively warm and humid.
Last Wednesday, I went out there to see what I could find, and came up with five species. Most were juveniles of course, and now is a good time to photograph them as they grow.
The ones I saw covered most of the possible size range. The smallest had a body
length of 0.11″/2.8 mm. At this size it could still be with its mother. The legs are short (fully stretched out in the photo) and they don’t run very fast. Their best defense is to pull their legs in close, stay still, and pretend they’re a wee lump of nothing worth notice.
The largest had a body length of 1.1″/27 mm. I’m still not certain which of two species it is and should have used a larger container for photos so she could stretch out her legs and show me another clue of her identity.
Doing the math suggests that the weight of 1,000 of the little ones would equal the weight of the large one.
Nature Along the El Camino Real 