ISU Bengal

Issue date: 9/12/07 Section: Life

Lake Tawokoni State Park rangers Mike McCord, left, and Freddie Gowinn continue to monitor a giant communal spider web at the park Tuesday, August 29, 2007 in Wills Point, Texas. (Tom Pennington/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/MCT)

WILLS POINT, Texas - If you hate creepy-crawlies, you might want to avoid Lake Tawakoni State Park, where a 200-yard stretch along a nature trail has been blanketed by a sprawling spider web that has engulfed seven large trees, dozens of bushes and even the weedy ground.
But if you hate mosquitoes, you might just love this bizarre web.
"At first, it was so white it looked like fairyland," said park Superintendent Donna Garde. "Now it's filled with so many mosquitoes that it's turned a little brown.
"There are times you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in those webs."
There have been heated Internet discussions among experts whether the web was constructed by social cobweb spiders, which work together, or is perhaps a mass dispersal in which the arachnids spin webs to spread out from one another.
Either way, it's generating a lot of bug buzz.
"I've been hearing from entomologists from Ohio, Kansas, British Columbia - all over the place," said Mike Quinn, an invertebrate biologist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department who first posted photos of the web on the Web.
But there is little consensus about what sparked the phenomenon or even the type of spider responsible. Parks officials say similar but smaller webs have appeared along another trail.
"From what I'm hearing it could be a once-in-a-lifetime event," said Herbert A. "Joe" Pase, a Texas Forest Service entomologist. "It's very, very unusual."
Park officials say they have gotten mixed reactions from visitors.
"Some can't wait to see it, while others don't want to go anywhere near it," said Trisha Brian, a park volunteer. "It's definitely not for everyone, but I'm so fascinated by it that I come down to look at it every day. Every time I come by, there's something new."
But one Texas spider expert couldn't muster much excitement about the giant web.
John Jackman, a professor and extension entomologist for Texas A&M University and author of "A Field Guide to the Spiders and Scorpions of Texas," said he receives similar reports every couple of years.

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