The Arachnophobe's Nightmare

If you are terrified by spiders, known as Arachnophobia, then you might not want to think about this. You might not want to hear this. You might not want to know this. Yes, it is a rare, horrifying natural phenomenon caused by spiders in Wagga Wagga, NSW, Australia (March, 2012), and Sindh Province, Pakistan (March, 2011).

This phenomenon happened in March 2012, when thousands of spiders of Linyphiidae family invaded Wagga Wagga. The tiny spiders, which are up to one centimeter long, lost their habitat when flood attacked it. The spiders wanted to search the new temporary habitat, so they invaded the farm and they formed spiderwebs and cocoons in the farm, as you can see in these pictures below. Not only farms, the spiders also covered the resident's houses and trees with spiderwebs! When you look by sight, it looks like meadow covered in thick, white blanket (or should I say a "wool look-a-like" blanket) with few black spots in the blanket. But if you look closely, they are spiderwebs, and the black spots are the spiders. How terrifying!

Graham Milledge, an entomology collections manager at Australian Museum in Sydney said that the behavior the spiders did is called ballooning, and the spiders often do it as a way of dispersing and getting into new area. But, in an event like this, they are just trying to escape from the flood. He also said that this family of spider is harmless to humans. But, it won't change my mind as an arachnophobe, though.

The characteristics of these Linyphiidae spiders, or wolf spiders, are that the spiders are solitary, but they won't mind being around each other and work together in these extreme situations. In this phenomenon, the spiders will eat their own spiderwebs as a protein because the flood had drowned the available foods. They also drink the rain droplets which is trapped around the spiderwebs. And, if the rain droplets are trapped in the spiderwebs, it can make the spider webs more sticky, so that the other insects and bugs are getting stuck in the filaments.

The same phenomenon also happened in Sindh Province, Pakistan, March 2011, when millions of spiders climbed into trees to escape the rising floodwater. As the water has taken so long to recede, the trees quickly became covered in a cocoon of spiderwebs. The result is an eerie, alien panorama, with any vegetation covered in a thick mass of webbing.However, the frightening phenomenon might be a blessing in disguise, because UK's department for international development reported that the invaded areas had fewer malaria-spreading mosquitoes (Anopheles sp.) than it was expected, even there was so much stagnant standing water that could be the place where the mosquitoes reproduce.

Source
(Wagga Wagga Spiderwebs)
1. news.com.au (http://www.news.com.au/national/spiders-spin-wet-blanket-over-wagga-wagga/story-e6frfkvr-1226291542235)
2. smh.com.au (http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/web-wonders-spiders-spin-for-their-lives-as-floodwaters-rise-20120307-1ujov.html)
(Pakistani Spiderwebs)
3. National Geographic (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/pictures/110331-pakistan-flood-spider-trees-webs)
4. Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/01/spiderwebs-in-trees-pakistan-floods_n_843521.html)