{"id":187,"date":"2016-01-16T00:16:17","date_gmt":"2016-01-16T08:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/?p=187"},"modified":"2016-03-13T16:37:58","modified_gmt":"2016-03-13T23:37:58","slug":"january-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/?p=187","title":{"rendered":"January 12"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"margin-bottom: 12pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; color: #212121;\"><span style=\"font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;\">2016 January 12<\/span><\/p>\n<p> &nbsp;&nbsp; Ren Ferguson writes from Salt Spring Island:&nbsp; On January 7, 2016 I was looking around the seeps in Channel Ridge on Salt Spring Island. There was a large rock with a bowl shape to it that had a thick carpet of moss inside the bowl. My pals and I were interested in the rock and we gently lifted the moss to see under it. It lifted easily and I was surprised to find a spider that looked like a <strong><span style=\"font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;\">Western Black Widow<\/span><\/strong> hanging out with pill bugs. &nbsp;I turned the spider over and the hour glass marking was plain to see, although it was more of a light orange colour than the usual red. I thought I would send in this report mainly because of the location of this spider. I have found them before but mostly on dry beach sites amongst logs and debris. Included is a photo of the spider on her back with her legs curled up in a defensive posture. Not a great image and the hour glass is overexposed so it looks almost white. Any comments on this find would be welcome as I don&rsquo;t know much about the habits of these spiders.<br \/> &nbsp;<br \/> &nbsp;&nbsp; Robb Bennett writes:&nbsp; Yes, the specimen appears to be a female <strong><span style=\"font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;\">Western Black Widow<\/span><\/strong>.&nbsp; They are fairly common on Salt Spring &#8211; especially on open south-facing slopes such as the Garry Oak woodlands on Mount Maxwell.<\/p>\n<p> <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-full wp-image-186\" src=\"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Black_Widow.jpg\" alt=\"Black Widow\" width=\"600\" height=\"699\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Black_Widow.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Black_Widow-258x300.jpg 258w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: #212121;\">Western Black Widow <em>Latrodectus hesperus <\/em>(Ara.:&nbsp; Theridiidae)<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: #212121;\">Ren Ferguson<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2016 January 12 &nbsp;&nbsp; Ren Ferguson writes from Salt Spring Island:&nbsp; On January 7, 2016 I was looking around the seeps in Channel Ridge on Salt Spring Island. There was a large rock with a bowl shape to it that had a thick carpet of moss inside the bowl. My pals and I were interested [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":186,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-invertebrate-alert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1567,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions\/1567"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}