PSYCHE 
VOL. XXXIII. APRIL 1926 No. 2 
SOCIAL HABITS OF SOME CANARY ISLAND SPIDERS 
By William Morton Wheeler. 
Bussey Institution, Harvard University 
During the summer of 1925, while I was visiting the Canary 
Islands with my friend, Dr. David Fairchild, as a guest of Mr. 
Allison Y. Armour on his yacht, the “Utowana,” my attention 
was attracted by the peculiar gregarious or social behavior of 
two species of spiders, Cyrtophora citricola Forskal and Argyrodes 
argyrodes Walker. The former was described and figured from 
the Canary Islands by Lucas as early as 1843 under the name of 
Epeira cacti-opuntice 1 . Simon 2 showed that this spider is the same 
as Cyrtophora opuntice Dufour, but in his later work 3 he adopts 
for it an earlier name, Cyrtophora citricola Forskal. He cites it 
as occurring in Corsica, Provence, Spain, Algeria, Sicily, Syria 
and the Island of Reunion “on cactus, aloes and more rarely on 
lentiscus.” He also gives a brief but accurate account of its 
web and egg-cocoons, but says nothing about its social proclivi- 
ties. In the former of the works cited (Vol. V, 1881 p. 16) Simon 
also mentions Argyrodes argyrodes as living “like a parasite on 
the web of Cyrtophora opuntice , more rarely on the web of Epeira 
adianta , Argiope lobata and Holocnemus rivulatus,” and as in- 
habiting Corsica, Spain, Algeria, Sicily, St. Helena, Madagascar, 
etc. 
Lucas merely records C. citricola from the Canary Islands, 
without mentioning particular localities. I saw both it and the 
Argyrodes on three of the islands, namely Teneriffe, Palma and 
Gran Canaria, but failed to find either of them on Lanzarote. 
r In Barker-Webb and Sabin Berthelot: Histoire Naturelle des Isles Can- 
aries ,1836-1844, p. 40 PI. 6, Figs. 7, 7a. 
2 Les Arachnides de Frances I, 1874, p. 34. 
3 Histoire Naturelle des Araignees, 2nd edit. II, 1892-1895. p. 771. 
