This is a tiger wolf spider! I spotted him on a poison sumac plant on Macinac Island. Macinac Island is a small island in northern Lake Heron. It is located near where the upper peninsula meets the rest of Michigan. These cryptic spiders can be found across the Eastern United States, Canada, and Mexico. They are seen as far west as Nebraska. 

As the name implies, these are hardy spiders. The females will even survive the brutally cold winters and live for up to two years. The males typically do not. This is because the female tiger wolf spiders sometimes eat their male lovers after breeding. This is also the case with the furrow orb weaver which we are featuring this month. This is referred to as “sexual cannibalism”. This typically happens if the female spider is larger than the male spider. Scientists have found that the larger this difference in size between the male and the female, the more likely the chance for the smaller male to be cannibalized.