Hello everyone, thought I would share some pics of two Aphonopelma species that live wild in my area. My family has a ranch in W Tx, and its an excellent place to search for and study them. We seem to have two species, one which is probably Aphonopelma steindachneri and the other is just called sp "Carlsbad Green".
This map shows the general area of where our land is located. It actually covers the corners of Andrews, Winkler, and Ector county, to be more exact.
The males of both species start walking in late June. Most people in my area call it the "Great Tarantula Migration" and no matter what I tell them wont change their minds. The males seem to be attracted to the roads, maybe because of the vibrations of the passing cars, so it does seem a bit as though they are migrating.
This mature male was still living in a burrow, I flushed it out with some water thinking it was the burrow of a female.
The females have really nice, deep burrows. Its amazing to see how deep they can go, especially in our extremely sandy soil. I have yet to find the two species living close to each other, but its very common to find one species living in large "communities." I have found as many as 25 in a 50 square yard area.
This is a sp "Carlsbad Green" I found and collected last summer.
Here is the burrow of another small sp "Carlsbad Green" that I collected. I flushed it from the burrow with water, and after photographing it, couldnt get it to go back into the burrow. It just kept walking away, and so I ended up taking it home with me. I wasnt prepaired to collect, so I ended up walking half a mile with the spider cupped in my hand, lol.
This was the burrow of a female I found about 6ft away from the previous spider. She was fairly large, but very skinny. She also seemed to have a wound on her abdomen.
These pictures should give yall and idea what the land is like. Its very very flat, and very very dry. We actually have no natural standing water, and rainfall is only about 14in a year average. Between September of last year, and July of this year, we actually got no rain on our ranch at all. Then in August, we had severe thunderstorms, and got as much as 8" in one week. (You can see a pumpjack in the first picture. They are used in the pumping of oil and natural gas.)
I hope yall enjoy the pics!
/Sky
This map shows the general area of where our land is located. It actually covers the corners of Andrews, Winkler, and Ector county, to be more exact.
The males of both species start walking in late June. Most people in my area call it the "Great Tarantula Migration" and no matter what I tell them wont change their minds. The males seem to be attracted to the roads, maybe because of the vibrations of the passing cars, so it does seem a bit as though they are migrating.
This mature male was still living in a burrow, I flushed it out with some water thinking it was the burrow of a female.
The females have really nice, deep burrows. Its amazing to see how deep they can go, especially in our extremely sandy soil. I have yet to find the two species living close to each other, but its very common to find one species living in large "communities." I have found as many as 25 in a 50 square yard area.
This is a sp "Carlsbad Green" I found and collected last summer.
Here is the burrow of another small sp "Carlsbad Green" that I collected. I flushed it from the burrow with water, and after photographing it, couldnt get it to go back into the burrow. It just kept walking away, and so I ended up taking it home with me. I wasnt prepaired to collect, so I ended up walking half a mile with the spider cupped in my hand, lol.
This was the burrow of a female I found about 6ft away from the previous spider. She was fairly large, but very skinny. She also seemed to have a wound on her abdomen.
These pictures should give yall and idea what the land is like. Its very very flat, and very very dry. We actually have no natural standing water, and rainfall is only about 14in a year average. Between September of last year, and July of this year, we actually got no rain on our ranch at all. Then in August, we had severe thunderstorms, and got as much as 8" in one week. (You can see a pumpjack in the first picture. They are used in the pumping of oil and natural gas.)
I hope yall enjoy the pics!
/Sky
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