Speedy, Hairy, and Harmless: Solifuges

In this episode, we are going to explore the world of arachnids, but not the spiders you likely imagined after I said that. Nor ticks, nor mites, nor scorpions. No, today we are focusing on solifuges. “Soli-what?” you may be thinking.

Joining us to explain more is Dr. Paula Cushing. Paula works at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in Colorado, where she is the senior curator of invertebrate zoology. She is an evolutionary biologist who studies evolutionary patterns and processes in arachnids. Paula’s research focuses on the diversity of arachnids in the Rocky Mountain/Great Plains ecoregion, leveraging community science projects such as the Colorado Spider Survey to engage more people in gathering observations. She has done research in all the deserts of the western United States, in Florida, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Puerto Rico, as well as in Mexico and Panama. 

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Photo credit: Harshjeet Singh Bal's CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Thank you for listening! For more information go to xerces.org/bugbanter.

Transcript

Rachel: Welcome to Bug Banter with the Xerces Society, where we explore the world of invertebrates and discover how to help these extraordinary animals. If you want to support our work, go to xerces.org/give.

Matthew: Hello, I'm Matthew Shepherd in Portland, Oregon.

Rachel: And I'm Rachel Dunham in Missoula, Montana.

Matthew: Today we are going to explore the world of arachnids, but not the spiders you likely imagined after I said that. Nor ticks, nor mites, nor scorpions. No, today we are focusing on solifuges. “Soli-what?” you may be thinking.

Matthew: Anyway, joining us to explain more is Dr. Paula Cushing. Paula works at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in Colorado, where she is the senior curator of invertebrate zoology. She is an evolutionary biologist who studies evolutionary patterns and processes in arachnids. Paula’s research focuses on the diversity of arachnids in the Rocky Mountain/Great Plains ecoregion, and leverages community science projects such as the Colorado Spider Survey to engage more people in gathering observations. She also has done research in all the deserts of the western United States, as well as in Florida, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Puerto Rico, and also Mexico and Panama.

Matthew: Welcome to Bug Banter, Paula!

Paula: Thanks so much for having me.

Rachel: Yeah, we're very excited, and very much looking forward to this topic. So let's start with the basics. What is a solifuge?

Paula: So a solifuge is an arachnid, as Matthew mentioned. So, to kind of understand where they are in the scheme of things. The animals that I study are animals—they're in the kingdom Animalia. They're in a big group called the phylum Arthropoda. And arthropods include anything with an exoskeleton—an outside skeleton—and jointed legs. So that's insects, and arachnids, and crabs, and millipedes, centipedes are all within that phylum. And then within that phylum, there's the class Arachnida. And the arachnids include a whole bunch of different orders—12 or 13 different orders. So, solifuges are in the order Solifugae. Spiders are in a totally different order—Araneae—and, as Matthew mentioned, there's a bunch of other orders that we're not gonna even touch on today. But it's an incredibly diverse group of animals that are very important in ecosystems all around the world.

Rachel: And what makes the order Solifugae unique?

Paula: Well, they're scary. No. They're unique in that they are, like scorpions, very well adapted to xeric environments—to dry, desert or semi-desert environments—around the world. Except in certain areas where you might expect to find them like Australia—they're not in Australia. So they have this really interesting worldwide distribution. They're well adapted to these very difficult habitats that are very dry, very challenging habitats for most organisms. But Solifugae—we call them camel spiders largely in the United States—they do really well in these habitats. They're active mostly at night, and they're voracious predators. They are just running around when they get active in the evening. They start moving around, looking for prey, and they don't stop. They just, they continue to move and continue to hunt. And they have this really interesting metabolic activity, as well—metabolic rate. So, most arachnids, spiders included, they, metabolically, they can't sustain continual movement. They can rush, and then they have to stop, and they have to regather their strength. Whereas with Solifugae, they can just move continually. They have a metabolism that's more like flying insects than like most arachnids. So that also makes them really unique. So their voracious appetite, their continual movement. And they also, they can't harm you, but they sure act like they're gonna go right for your jugular. They don't hesitate at all to chomp down on you if they feel threatened.

Rachel: It's interesting that they're known as camel spiders here in the United States, but they're not spiders. You've mentioned the metabolic differences. Are there any other anatomical differences between the two orders?

Paula: There's a lot of anatomical differences. Solifugae, the camel spiders—and I'll refer to them both as Solifugae and camel spiders throughout this interview—but they have these structures, they have—. So I should explain. With arachnids—most arachnids have two major body parts. They have four pairs of walking legs. They have a pair of front appendages called pedipalps. And those pedipalps take on different forms depending on the group. So with scorpions, most people know they have pinchers. Those pinchers are their pedipalps. But with Solifugae, with the camel spiders, their pedipalps are leg-like, but they're covered in sensory setae, sensory hair-like setae that are picking up vibrations, probably picking up chemical cues in the environment.

Paula: They also have these structures at the tips of the pedipalps that are called suctorial organs. And these suctorial organs, they can pop out like little balloon-like structures. And they function like a gecko's toe pads. So the suctorial organs, the Solifugae can pop them out and can use them to pull prey closer to the mouth parts. They can use those suctorial organs to hold onto smooth surfaces, including males will hold on and manipulate the female's body using those suctorial organs. So those are a unique structural adaptation that you only see with solifuges. Another organ system that they have are called malleoli, or racquet organs. And these are these leaf-like structures that they have underneath their fourth pair of legs. And they drag those malleoli on the ground as they walk. And it's been shown by scientists that those are picking up chemical cues in the environment. So we think that they're using those malleoli kind of like scorpions. If you know about scorpions’ pectines. Scorpion pectines are also these structures underneath the body of scorpions that are acting functionally in similar ways—they're dragging the pectines on the ground. The solifuges are dragging the malleoli, and they're picking up chemical cues, chemical signals that are probably left by prey, or by each other. So that might be one way that, for example, males can find females is by using those chemosensors, those malleoli, to find the females. And we don't see any structures like that in other arachnids.

Paula: They also have enormous mouth parts. So the jaws of solifuges, and the jaws of all arachnids, are called chelicerae. And with solifuges, the chelicerae are huge compared to the body. So the musculature of those very powerful jaws, the chelicerae, that musculature is making up a large part of the internal landscape, inside the head. So they use those really powerful chelicerae to grab hold of prey and to tear the prey apart. And it's up in the air whether they can take in and—. There's some—some literature suggests that they can eat little bits and pieces of the prey, but inside their mouth parts, they have a filtering structure. So I think they, as with the majority of arachnids, are mostly doing external digestion. They're vomiting out digestive enzymes, and then those digestive enzymes are breaking down the tissue, and they're just sucking it in, sucking up that pre-liquified, pre-digested meal into their mouths, into their digestive systems. But the chelicerae are doing this great job just tearing prey apart.

Rachel: I know earlier you had sort of jokingly said that they're scary, and that's what makes them unique. Haha. And at Bug Banter we try really hard to get people to love these animals and not be afraid of them.

Paula: Haha. Yes.

Rachel: But I can understand that they sound terrifying. But they can be both scary, and super interesting and very cool.

Paula: Exactly. Yeah.

Rachel: Thank you for describing all of that. I feel like [in] my mind, I'm like, “Oh my goodness. I need to know more.” I'm surprised they're not found in Australia. You said they're found in the United States. Where else can these be found?

Paula: You can find them–. In North America, you can find them in any xeric, dry habitats. So they're found in all the desert ecosystems in the United States, and down through northern Mexico. All the way down through southern Mexico, and down through South America. So they're found in the Atacama Desert. They're found in all the major desert ecosystems. They're found in the Middle East. There's huge diversity in Africa. So we know that the desert ecosystems cover a good part of southern Africa. You can find many different species of solifuges through there. So they're found in many different places in the world, largely in xeric, desert, semi desert habitats. They can be found in more mesic habitats, as well. But my guess is that if you look at their distribution within those moister environments, the subhabitats where they're found are probably microclimatically dry. So even little pockets of drier habitat.

Matthew: When you were describing the camel spiders, I was looking at your shirt.

Paula: Yes.

Matthew: Is it all camel spiders? I couldn't decide.

Paula: It is.

Matthew: Certainly there on your right shoulder, there's a really nice—. As you were describing the chelicerae, I was like, “Oh yeah, that's exactly what they look like.”

Paula: This brilliant colleague of mine who is both an arachnologist, a scientist, Cara Shillington, she works mostly in, studies mostly tarantulas, but she's also a master seamstress. So she made me this special shirt, which is my solifugid lecture shirt. Haha. So this is what I wear anytime I have to talk about these animals. But yeah, it's covered with Solifugae.

Matthew: That's great. When you were talking about the dry climate—the only time I've encountered these animals was actually in East Africa. I spent a couple of years working in Kenya. And I was thinking of that as tropical, but then, I was right on the coast, and so that was in a relatively dry zone. Very sandy soils, and much drier forest. But yes, they are, as you hinted, scary looking creatures.

Matthew: I certainly wanted to talk more about their natural history and behaviors, but before we do that, I'd like to talk about common names. You've already hinted at the different ways in which you could pronounce some of the names, and the range of names. And in my own exploration over the years—. I certainly was reading a bit more and thinking about this episode. Camel spider, wind scorpion, sun spider, solpugid, soluge. And the names go on and on. Is there a preferred name, or most widely used common name? Or does it just vary with wherever you are?

Paula: I think it varies regionally. Largely in North America, they're—the most common name is camel spider. But in parts of Africa you'll hear them referred to as haarskeerders, meaning “hair cutters.” Because they believe that they come into your bed at night and clip your hair with their very large jaws. In parts of, Mexico they call them perro de agua—"water dogs”—because they seem to pulse out, there seems to be an increase in their activity right after the rainstorms. So it really depends on what region you're in what they're called.

Matthew: Common names intrigue me because they often give insight into how people interact with or interpret the characteristics and behaviors. And as you say—. Do they clip hair? Probably not. But this idea of there being a kind of a pulse or an increase in them after rains in Mexico is an intriguing one. Talking more about behaviors—what do they eat? You were saying they're like constantly, actively hunting. So what are they hunting for?

Paula: They're really generalists. They really are generalist predators. They will eat anything that they can take down. So in parts of Africa, they can get four inches—ten centimeters—or more in size. Really huge. So they could take down some small vertebrates pretty easily. Mostly, they're eating insects. There's some studies in the literature that suggest they tend not to like really hard-bodied insects. Like beetles tend to be less preferred because they're harder to crunch through. But really, they'll eat anything that they can grab, and that they can tear apart. So I don't think they necessarily have a food preference. They're what we would call euryphagic. They're broadly—have a very broad range of dietary components. So they'll eat moths, they'll eat crickets, whatever they can get.

Matthew: I encountered them in Kenya. And when I was there, I did have an office in a building, with—the windows were largely open all the time. And the folks at the forest department there liked to leave the light on at night, which meant I would come in the mornings, and it was this entomological delight. Moths on the curtains, and mantids roaming around—just astonishing things. That's where I found the camel spiders, too. I had cardboard boxes on the floor on their side, kind of as bookshelves. And I always had to be careful if I needed a book because they would hide during the day amongst my books. And they were these big four-inch-long ones. They were—. Yeah. And I didn't realize that they were essentially harmless to me. I just kept well away from them. Haha.

Paula: Although when they're that big, those mouthparts, those jaws really are powerful. And a colleague of mine who used to work at our museum, Frank Krell, who did a lot of work in Africa, said that he would do work in the deserts at night. And he had colleagues who, when a solifugid ran up and bit them, it would break the skin. So it would cause some minor injuries pretty easily with those really powerful jaws. So here in the United States, in North America, the species are too small to break the skin, but they will—they'll give you a good, healthy pinch.

Matthew: And is it just high speed that these solifuges use to catch their prey? Because most spiders—we typically think of a spider waiting in a web. But obviously, spiders—there are jumping spiders, and wolf spiders, and others that patrol around hunting. And I imagine the solifuges, they're active and they're chasing things down rather than lurking.

Paula: Yes, largely they're chasing things down. Although, as you mentioned, they are positively phototactic. So a lot of them—not all of them—but a lot of them seem to be attracted to lights. I have all sorts of hypotheses as to why they might be attracted to lights at night. But we know that insects are attracted to lights. And so if you're in an area where there are—a habitat where the lights are on, the insects will come to the light. And so will the predators, including the solifuges. And when that happens, the solifuges might be seen just sitting on a wall near the light and grabbing the insects. So not using a lot of running down the insects, but rather just sit-and-wait. But when the insect is there, they'll rush at it. So they use a combination of hunting strategies.

Matthew: That's really interesting. And how long do they live for? How long does it take an adult to get the size of one on your shirt? Did they reach that in a year, or—?

Paula: Yes. And a lot of these basic questions, we don't know the answers to. So I have about 26 colleagues. I'm leading an effort to write a textbook [that] focuses on camel spiders. And the textbook will be published by Springer Nature in 2027. And we're hoping to use that biology and natural history of camel spiders textbook as a springboard to get more people involved in this research, so that we can answer these basic questions. So we don't really know how long a lot of them live. What we think is that the females will lay their eggs—most of the females for most of the species probably die soon after the eggs are laid. Then the little babies, the nymphal babies will hatch out and will stay clustered. Then when they go through about two or three molts, they're ready to hunt on their own, so they'll leave. What is that span of time? It's maybe a few weeks, maybe a couple of weeks. And then they continue to molt and grow. So we think that most of them probably have about a one, or between a one- and two-year life cycle from egg through maturity. But we really don't know the answer to that.

Matthew: I think people are often surprised when we don't know what seem like basic information. Because you think about a bird, and it's “Oh, we know where they live. We know how long. We know where they nest. We know what they eat.” But there's just this world of animals out there where there's so much more to learn. Which is also wonderful and fascinating.

Paula: And it's the majority of animals that Xerces is focused on.

Matthew: Uh huh.

Paula: It's those invertebrates where we really need more people to just get that basic information about biology. We know all about the vertebrates. But you talk about any invertebrate, there's a lot of open natural history questions that still remain to be answered.

Matthew: Yeah, certainly. And along this way—do we know, do solifuges, do they have a nest or long-term shelter, or is it a kind of a nomadic life?

Paula: We're not sure about that answer either. I think for a lot of the species, it depends on the prey base in that habitat. So I had a student, a former PhD student who just graduated, Ryan Jones. He led a study looking at site fidelity at a site here in the Denver area. He did a mark-recapture study where he was asking those questions like: are you seeing those same individuals night after night? And he did find some support for that. But that was also a site where. This was during COVID when the lights were off at that facility, but in normal times the lights would be on. So there might be a pretty rich prey base there. So there might be an adaptive reason why that population has no reason to be nomadic.

Paula: I think it largely depends on the prey base and the resource base. If there's a good, solid resource base, then you might find permanent or semi-permanent burrows—for, at least for the females. I think the males would be more mobile, because the males—in most arachnid groups, males are less long lived. They're out there actively looking for females, mating, and then dying shortly afterwards. So for some it may be that they'll have permanent or semi-permanent burrows. I think for a lot of those species, my guess is—and it's a guess—my guess is that when the female is ready to lay her eggs, yeah, she's gonna establish a semi-permanent burrow. She's gonna dig down, lay her eggs where they can be protected in this underground, subterranean environment until they get old enough to hunt. So in that case, that might be considered permanent, semi-permanent burrow. But prior to her laying eggs, who knows? She might be just hunting, hunting, hunting to bulk up her body and get that the nutrition she needs to develop those eggs. And then when morning comes, she might just dig a temporary burrow. So we—there's a lot of those aspects of their daily life cycle that we just, we don't know. We can guess at, but we don't know.

Matthew: And it does seem logical that if you're living in a desert, which seems like an area with fewer resources, you are more likely to be moving around, so you can exploit what there is. And then when you find an area, like a building, that's regularly lit and brings the prey in, then that's a place where you may want to linger longer.

Paula: Yep.

Rachel: Earlier you mentioned some of their nicknames with some fun translations like “hair shaver.” They do seem a little bit scary. And you did say their mouth parts [are] a little too small, if you're in the U.S., to actually bite. What if someone finds one in their house? What would you recommend that they do?

Paula: Be curious! That's what I would say about any arachnid that's found in the house is take the time to learn about it. You don't need to be worried about it. It's not gonna go for your children. You're not gonna lose your small child to a solifugid overnight. So there's nothing that's gonna happen. It's not gonna do you any harm. Even if it pinches your finger. Or your kid's finger. At the most, it's gonna—if it breaks through the skin, you'll get a little, teeny tiny cut, but that's unlikely to happen. So if people are freaked out by them, just put them outside. You're only gonna see them during the warm season anyway.

Paula: What it does mean is that you have a good habitat outside your house. So you have a habitat where animals like solifuges can find some safety. So good on you for having the landscaping, and the kind of yard that would support those kinds of populations. But yeah, they can just put them outside and they'll be fine. And if you really don't like your cat, and it's really big, maybe try to—. Haha. No. Yeah, they're not gonna hunt your cat. I'm just kidding. But just put them outside.

Rachel: I love that answer. I don't think I've ever asked anyone about arachnids—finding one in your home, what you do, and the answer is “to be curious.” But I love that. I am definitely, I’m all about karma, and I feel like they know. I did my grad research in Panama, and we lived in this like open-air space, and there were spiders everywhere, all over. And the woman who ran it, she always told me, she was like, “There's karma. If you kill a spider, the other spiders know.” And ever since then, I'm like, “You're right.” And now it's like, well, I appreciate them and I don't wanna kill them. So I always put them outside.

Paula: As a museum curator who goes out and collects these animals, that just means my karma is terrible.

Rachel: Haha.

Paula: Haha. I've killed a lot of them.

Rachel: But you're also doing research to help learn about their life history so that we can conserve them. So definitely balancing the scales there.

Paula: Hopefully. Hopefully.

Matthew: Yeah, it's not just squishing them because you came across them. We know you're currently doing research on these, yeah, amazing, fascinating animals. Can you tell us more about this? Is there anything in particular? Behaviors, or ecology that you're looking into?

Paula: What I've been doing the last, probably 20 years—. I actually got pulled into the research by a gentleman named Jack Brookhart, who had been studying these animals since the 1960s. And Jack lives in the Denver area, he's now in his nineties. And we still contact Jack for kind of advice on publications that we're putting together. Jack is a world expert on these animals. But when I got my job at the museum, and I found out he lived in the area, and he found out there was an arachnologist, we teamed up, and he and I started doing research. He's why I got into the field.

Paula: And then I got some National Science Foundation grants to continue the work on these, on camel spiders. And I recruited students. So we've trained the next generation of scientists. But what our research is mostly focused on is looking at the phylogeny, looking at the evolutionary relationships between and among species, genera within one family—within one of the major families that's found in North America. So in North America we find two families—at least in the United States—Eremobatidae and Ammotrechidae. And our lab is focused on the phylogenetics of the  Eremobatidae —of one of these families. So we're using studies of the morphology as well as DNA. So these days when you're looking at—evolutionary—trying to understand how different species are related to one another—different taxonomic groups are related—scientists are largely using DNA. So they're taking a leg, or they're, in our case, they're taking a bit of tissue from the jaw, and they're breaking down that tissue to release the DNA. And they're using the DNA as our data set for understanding how species are related to one another.

Paula: So we're on the tail end of that very long research program where we're trying to get an evolutionary tree that shows how the different groups are related, how the different species are related. And then from that tree, we can then use morphology and biogeography to determine which of these evolutionary clades—these evolutionary lineages—should be classified as a group—that group is largely a genus, a new genus—and what species are in that group. Or alternately, to ask whether taxa that were described as different species, really there's no DNA or morphological support to continue to say that they should be synonymized. So that's the kind of work that we're doing—phylogenetic analysis, and then using that to revise the taxonomic understanding of this one group, this one family.

Paula: But throughout my career, I am a serendipitous researcher. So my research is all focused on arachnids, but if there's an interesting element to their biology that pops up, I'll explore that. So I've published on the functional morphology of setae that are on the pedipalps. I've published one or two papers on their hunting behavior. So if there's a good question and I'm getting some data that might answer a natural history question, or a behavioral question, or functional morphology, I'll pursue that. So I'm not just strictly a phylogeneticist or taxonomist.

Matthew: And part of this—we mentioned that there's the Colorado Spider Survey, and I'm assuming that there's a way in which people can contribute through community science, participatory science. When I was thinking about today's episode, as I went to iNaturalist, and I was like, “Oh, we have them in Oregon.” There's so many ways in which people can contribute to building our knowledge, isn't there?

Paula: Yes, absolutely. iNaturalist is an excellent resource. Although for solifuges, the problem is that the morphological structures that we use to figure out what species you're looking at are really subtle, and usually are not captured in a dorsal photograph—in a photograph just of the animal running across the road. So the best we can do is tell you, if somebody posts a picture on iNat, we can tell you it's in this family or that family based on those broad morphological characteristics, but we can't say what species it is. We can provide a list of species that it might be based upon the locality. So iNaturalist is not a great resource for information on species diversity of this particular group of arachnids. Whereas for butterflies, or bees, where those color patterns are really, really informative for species diversity.

Paula: But GBIF is another good resource—so Global Biodiversity Information Facility, gbif.org—has collections data on these different organisms. So you can get species distribution maps for different species of solifuges using GBIF. So that's one that I would recommend. All of our data for my collection is pushed out to GBIF.

Rachel: Do we know what ecological role they play in these desert ecosystems?

Paula: We know that—. For their ecological role, we do know that they're major predators. So in these dry habitats where they're found, you have scorpions, and solifuges, and maybe some beetles that are the top arthropod predators in those environments. So they are one important component of the whole community of arthropods and vertebrates that are found in those habitats. And in terms of the vertebrates, they're also a good food source. So night-active, hunting predators, vertebrate predators that would eat insects or other arthropods are going to eat solifuges, if they can find them. So we're talking about owls that might be active, that might readily hunt any kind of insect that's running around, is not gonna—it’s not gonna see a solifugid and say, “No, that's not an insect, so I'm not gonna grab that.” So they're an important food source, as well, for these desert-adapted vertebrates, as well as an important predator of in the invertebrate community.

Rachel: So I know this is gonna be a hard question, but do you have a favorite arachnid?

Paula: Even as kid, I was just intrigued with why we live on this planet that has life on it. Like it's the only planet in the solar system, maybe the universe, that has life on it. So I was always—I always wanted to pursue that question of: how did life evolve on this planet? I fell into arachnology because I knew that there would be a lot more research questions available and open that hadn't been answered with arthropods. I was more interested in animals and plants, and I gravitated towards arthropods because we know their diversity is incredible, and yet the number of researchers in those fields is not necessarily incredible, if you compare it to mammologists or ornithologists—people studying mammals or birds. So I gravitated towards arthropods. And then when I went to college—I grew up out East—and I went to college at Virginia Tech, and there were two biology professors who studied arthropods. One studied butterflies—and good on you, Xerces, for focusing on butterflies and bees, but butterflies are a super popular group in terms of arthropod diversity. And the other guy, the other professor, studied spiders. So I was like, “Oh, I bet there's, I bet there's some openings there.”

Paula: And so I met with the arachnologist, Dr. Brent Opell, and as we conversed in one of those first conversations, I was asking him questions about spiders, and he was trying to get information on how much I knew. And he mentioned spiders that live in ant colonies. And I said like, “How do they get away with that? How do they break through that barrier of the aggressive ants?” And his answer was a very powerful answer. It was: “We don't know.” That is the best answer somebody can give a student is: we don't know. Because that told me that there was an opening for me. That was a great field if there were questions that still remain to be answered. So I just went into arachnology because of that. But in terms of favorites, I don't really have favorites. I have favorite questions, but not necessarily favorite organisms. So I've published papers on spiders, on scorpions, on—lots of papers on solifuges, but I just pursue interesting questions.

Rachel: I think it's funny because you're very similar to them in that you're opportunistic. Haha.

Paula: Yes. That's a great way to look at it.

Matthew: We know that insects in general are in decline. Do we know enough about solifuges to know if their populations are stable or in decline?

Paula: That's such a good question, and no, we don't. The answer is no we don't know enough about them, about their population health, or species diversity, anything like that. But I do know, just observationally, that when I have revisited sites that are the type localities for a particular species, particularly out West—California, comes to mind—the whole habitat was completely transformed and urbanized where that species had been reported decades and decades before. So I think with solifuges, my guess is that urbanization, and impacts to habitats due to irrigation, due to urbanization, due to transformation of these very delicate ecosystems into neighborhoods, or into agricultural ecosystems—that is gonna really impact these desert-adapted, xeric-adapted species. But we don't have enough information to be able to say that for sure.

Matthew: And you've already said that people who find them in their house should celebrate that they have good habitat, good conditions for them.

Paula: Yes.

Matthew: Is there anything in particular that a homeowner, or a park manager, or people in general can do to help solifuges? Other than just enjoy them, appreciate them, and learn more?

Paula: I think if you're in an area that is an open plain, and a xeric area, what you can do is not plant Kentucky bluegrass. You can think about what plants you establish in your yards that are more native vegetation. And Xerces does a great job educating people on butterfly gardens, and getting people to think about how they're thinking about their yard as a natural habitat, as a landscape that will encourage native species. So for example, here in Colorado, I live in an area that's very close to open space. And so I have pulled up all the non-native grasses in my yard and the introduced weeds, and I planted native grasses, and I have native bushes that are naturally establishing themselves. Like, I think my neighbors are gonna find that in a few years my whole yard has transformed into a—into the field that we find in the open space behind my house. And that is totally okay with me. Because, as a biologist, that's what I wanna do. I wanna really think, be thoughtful about my yard and my urban environment as an extension to the natural environment that's found outside those neighborhoods.

Matthew: Yeah. No, that's—I think that's very true. And for any listeners, they'll pick up on this recurring theme, which is: if you have natural, native plants, if you have habitat, there are things you can do, and then you'll see the wildlife come back. And yes, for sure, we do talk about butterflies a lot, and bees a lot, but all the time it's, “If you do this to help these insects you like, you are gonna benefit so much else.” Because they're just one element of the environment, of the habitat, and what you do to help them is gonna support so much else. Yeah. No, that's great. Thank you.

Paula: Yep.

Rachel: I love just your perspective and how you speak about it. We talk a lot about like “tidy” versus like “messy” and these expectations that people have for their yard space, or their green space in these urban habitats. And I always just think people pay a lot of money, and spend time, and plan to go to national parks, national forests, wildlife refuges—places they can go camping and enjoy nature. It's like, you wouldn't go to these places and be like, “Oh, this is messy. We need to make it tidy.” You wouldn't even describe it as messy. So why do we do that to ourselves in our own neighborhoods? We want it to be wild. Wild is good. Wild means wildlife, and habitat, and beauty, and being able to experience these incredible animals. So I think it's slowly—I feel like we're changing that mindset—very slowly—in those expectations, and seeing what's negative and what's positive. And I love, Paula, how you described your yard, and your interaction with your neighbors of what that will look like later on as this native vegetation grows. I just really love that. Thank you for painting that picture.

Paula: And to jump off on that, or to expand on that, people need to start recognizing that nature is not something that's “out there”—only in the national parks, or only in the mountains, or only on the coast. Nature is right outside your front door. And I would hope that people start welcoming nature and not trying to just get rid of it. Don't use pesticides. Try to reduce your use of herbicides, try to reduce your use of water. If you get rid of all of those non-native landscape plants, it's gonna save you money in the long run. Like you don't need to water these native grasses to the extent that you do non-native plants that are in these xeric habitats, like where I live. So if people can start thinking that nature is part of their day-to-day lives, nature can be right outside your front door that, that would be a great mindset to change.

Matthew: Yeah, and as well, the way you were describing it, nature will save you money, too.

Paula: Yes. Haha.

Matthew: Your water bill will be smaller. You won't be paying for those products.

Paula: Yeah. You won't even be putting in new plants every year because if you put natives in, they can establish. They're well adapted to that environment, so.

Rachel: I love that. Well, thank you so much, Paula. We've learned so much from you today. It's just been such a pleasure. And thank you for sharing your story of how you came to studying arachnids. It's always so inspiring for us to hear people's journey to where they ended up. And I so appreciate the work that you do, and that you chose this path. I think just even in this last hour, I'm so inspired, and now I really wanna go and see if I can find a camel spider somewhere in the U.S. Haha. And I never thought I'd say that, so thank you for that.

Rachel: We're gonna end here on one of our favorite questions. I'm curious as to what your answer is. If you could see any bug or invertebrate in the wild, what would it be and why?

Paula: Oh, gosh. Yeah, I've seen—I'm lucky enough to have seen some of the arachnids on my life list. So I just went to Madagascar last year with a friend of mine, and I saw the pelican spider, which was—. I think our local guides are so used to tourists that were looking up in the trees for the lemurs, and they just, they—I threw them off because I was looking from the tree level on down. I was just focused on the arachnids. And the pelican spiders are these bizarre spiders that have these really long cephalothorax —very long, almost like a neck—and very long chelicerae. And they're well adapted to hunting other spiders. I must have been crazy, but that was on my life list, and I've seen that. So what else would be on my life list? I'm sure I've got others, but I, offhand, I can't think of anything. I'm just excited about any natural organisms that I can see whenever I travel. So I just look to see the diversity that I can see.

Rachel: I love that answer. I love that you got to see a spider that you've really wanted to see! And that you threw people off for it.

Paula: And our guide—we had a local guide who was traveling with us. And I took so many pictures of the native Malagasy spiders that I put together a PDF guide for him that he could incorporate into his future tours, so that he wouldn't have to just tell people about the lemurs. He could start incorporating information about the spiders, as well. Haha.

Matthew: And I have to admit that while you were talking, I just went online and searched for pelican spider, and wow!

Paula: Yes!

Matthew: That's a remarkable structure. And I can see totally why they say pelican spider, because that's what it looks like.

Paula: Yes, yes! And I was lucky I saw it at one of the hotel grounds. So the people at the hotel must have thought there was some wacko woman because at 11—. We got in, we ate dinner, and then at as soon as it got dark, I started walking around the hotel area just looking for spiders. And I found the pelican spider on one of these properties. So all these people staying in this very nice resort, were just seeing this headlamp-woman walking around with a headlamp. Haha. But I saw it one evening, and the second evening I went out and it had a spider in its chelicerae. So I was able to take pictures of it actually hunting. It was just so thrilling!

Matthew: I have to say, I'm sure the other people—if you had other people on the same tour group as you—they probably gained way more outta their trip with you being there.

Paula: Haha. Thank you.

Rachel: I agree. My cheeks hurt from smiling so much. I would go on a tour anytime with you, Paula. And I would get just as excited about seeing anything that you would get excited about. Your enthusiasm is really contagious, which is wonderful. Thank you so much.

Paula: Thank you so much. This is—. Oh, it was so much fun. And thanks, Xerces, for all the great work you do. It was great to meet you, Rachel and Matthew, and great to see you in person.

Matthew: Yeah, thank you. This has been a really fun hour, so thank you.

Matthew: Bug Banter is brought to you by the Xerces Society, a donor-supported nonprofit that is working to protect insects and other invertebrates—the life that sustains us.

Matthew: If you are already a donor, thank you so much. If you want to support our work, go to xerces.org/donate. For information about this podcast or for show notes, go to xerces.org/bugbanter.