Thousands of spiders worked together to build huge web

By ANNA M. TINSLEY

Star-Telegram Staff Writer

Three times they've built it. Three times wind and rain have torn it down.

But Tuesday afternoon, thousands of Texas spiders were back at it, working to rebuild an immense spider web at Lake Tawakoni State Park that at one time stretched about 200 yards, covering bushes and trees to create a creepy canopy.

Researchers say they now believe thousands of spiders from different species worked together to make one huge web -- much different from the traditional individual webs that would normally be woven. Together, they've built and rebuilt a web that has caught countless bugs and the attention of people nationwide.

"These spiders seem to be working together to build it back," said Zach Lewis, an office clerk at the park. "It's really something to see.

"They're crawling on trees, on the ground, everywhere," he said. "We're here praying for rain all the time, but with something like this, you kind of want the rain to stop."

Months of work

Ever since the web was first spotted this summer at the state park about 50 miles east of Dallas, tourists and park workers have been amazed by its magnitude.

A biker and his son reported seeing the web in mid-June, describing it as something similar to a science fiction movie.

"The webs were just streaming in and out through the tops of the trees," Kim Feuerbacher of Rockwall wrote on a Web site detailing the development of the web. "We could not get off that trail fast enough.

"It looked just like a spider would have jumped from tree to tree with a can of silly string."

Researchers say it likely took 1 1/2 to two months to weave such a large web.

New research

Researchers took samples of the spiders in late August and Allen Dean, an entomologist at Texas A&M University in College Station, helped identify them.

He found spiders from 12 families, with the most prevalent being from the Tetragnathidae family. Identified spiders were funnel web weavers, sac spiders, orb weavers, mesh web weavers, wolf spiders, pirate spiders, jumping spiders and long-jawed orb weavers, according to the researchers' report.

For weeks, people have speculated about how such a big web could have been created and whether spiders worked together to build it.

The motive may well be food, researchers say.

The larger the web, the more flies and bugs get stuck, providing an abundant food supply for the spiders.

"Spiders generally are cannibalistic and keep their webs distinct," Dean said. "We're not sure what started the initial webbing...but there probably have been thousands of spiders working on the web.

"With the amount of rain that has occurred this year and the huge food supply available, it just created the right condition for all of this," he said. "It's possible we'll see it again. But this happened to be a year where the conditions were right."

Trying to rebuild

For now, park workers and visitors are keeping an eye on the web and the spiders.

Mother Nature hasn't helped, with wind and rain knocking down the massive web at least three times.

When spider fans come to see the web, park host volunteer Trisha Brian tells them if it's down.

"But it's still an amazing sight," she said. "Where the web fell down, all the foliage under that has died off. It's brown and yucky.

"But you see the spiders working, trying to rebuild. They're spinning within trees and when the wind dies down, we're assuming they'll go tree to tree again," she said. "Hollywood couldn't have done as good a job in their best day as nature has done with this."