Living for around two years on average, cellar spiders prefer to build their nests in close proximity of each other, creating web communities. Constructing loose and irregular shaped webs, cellar spiders hang upside down in them as they wait for their prey. Both species have medium-sized eyes, bodies up to 8 mm long, and a colour that is grey, light brown or pale yellow. Long-bodied cellar spiders have a 2-inch leg span while the short-bodied variant has a 1/2-inch leg span. No cellar spider species are known to be endangered.Generally speaking, there are two cellar spider species in Canada – long-bodied and short-bodied. These spiders are not dangerous to people, and they sometimes eat insects that are pests to humans. We don't know for sure why they do this, maybe to make themselves harder to see. If their web is touched, they sometimes vibrate back and forth very fast. What eats them and how do they avoid being eaten?Ĭellar spiders mainly avoid predators by living in dark places. Males who come to mate with the female may get eaten by the cellar spider instead. They sometimes hunt around the edges of the webs of female spiders of other species. Many cellar spiders also raid the webs of other spiders, eating their prey and the spiders themselves. When a passing insect bumps into it, they come running out and grab it and bite it, then wrap it in silk. They use their web as a kind of prey-detection system. They spin a large loose, three-dimensional web (not flat like orbweavers) that is not sticky. They eat insects, spiders, and other small invertebrates. Like all spiders, cellar spiders are predators. They are also very sensitive to vibrations in their webs. Spiders in this group probably use touch and chemicals to communicate, though they can see too. They are not social animals, they only come together to mate. They often hang upside down while waiting for prey to touch their webs. Most cellar spiders don't move around too much, they usually stay with their web, or raid nearby webs. We don't know for sure how long these spiders live, probably only a few years at most, and very few probably make it that long. To grow they have to shed their exoskeleton, which they do many times during their lives. These animals are found in the following types of habitatĬellar spiders hatch from eggs, and the hatchlings look more or less like grown-up spiders, though sometimes their colors change as they age.These spiders prefer to live in dark places: in caves, cracks and crevices in rocks, unused animal burrows, and in the dark and quiet parts of buildings. Only a few species occur in Michigan, but they are common in basements and unused buildings. One species in particular, Pholcus phalangioides, is particularly comfortable living in houses and other buildings, and so has been spread all around the world by people moving around. There are hundreds of species of cellar spiders found all over the world. Their color varies from light tan to grayish-brown.įemale cellar spiders are often much bigger than males. Cellar spiders have fangs that they use to bite their prey with, and have venom glands, but their fangs are very short. These are used to grab prey, and in mating, and are much bigger in male spiders than in females.ĭifferent species of cellar spiders have six or eight eyes, and the size and arrangement of eyes is different in different groups. On the front they have two small "mini-legs" called palps. Because of this they are sometimes called "daddy longlegs spiders", though they are not related to the other "daddy longlegs," which are Harvestmen. Their legs are many times longer than their bodies. Cellar spiders have very long thin legs compared to other spiders. They have eight legs, all attached to the cephalothorax. Like all spiders, cellar spiders have two body-segments, a cephalothorax in front and an abdomen behind.
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