Cavechat.org

When surveying two small rock shelters/caves in Bucks County PA yesterday, I noticed many spiders. Below are two pictures of the same spider. I did some googling, and noticed it looked very similar to the Cave Spider (Meta menardi). http://www.kendall-bioresearch.co.uk/spider.htm However, this appears to be a European cave spider. Since it wasn't in Europe, it there an American counterpart? I would just like to be more specific than referring to it as a cave spider.

Much Thanks!

Mike Spencer

From Dr. Steve Taylor's cave critter website-

http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/~sjtaylor/cave/arachnida.html

Looks like Meta menardi=Meta americana=Meta ovalis

A cave orb weaver, for sure!

Oh, I see, I guess those are young Meta ovalis then? I looked at that link in your post after I submitted my post: http://forums.caves.org/viewtopic.php?t=3445

cool!! I saw one of those in Howards too!!

I didnt show it to my wife though.. she wouldnt have been as curious.

Thanks for the links and other pictures. There were a decent number of them in the short cave, so I wanted to make sure they got reported correctly. Unfortunately, very little has been documented about cave biota in my area of Eastern PA (Bucks, Northampton, Lehigh & Berks). I'm sure I'll see these interesting critters again.

- Mike Spencer