What kind of spider is this on my eggplant?

[Fiishergurl]

Pictures attached. You can only see his legs on the right under the curled leaf (he scurried and hid) and droppings. He has a blackish body and brown translucent legs. Hes about the size of a pencil eraser head maybe smaller. He weaves the leaf together with his web.





Ginny

[Worth1]

I need to see the body.

Worth

[Fiishergurl]

It's squished. Where there's one, there's probably more so next one I find, I will ask it to pose for a proper photo shoot.

Ginny

[Worth1]

Probably some kind of jumping spider or ghost spider.
They run around catching bad bugs and eating them.
They are very shy.

Worth

[Fiishergurl]

Originally Posted by Worth1

Probably some kind of jumping spider or ghost spider.
They run around catching bad bugs and eating them.
They are very shy.

Worth

It's damaging my eggplant leaves pretty badly. I mess up one nest by prying the webbed leaf apart and spraying off whatever it is that it left behind, then next time there is another leaf curled up. This time is the first time I actually saw a spider though, so maybe the other times I just ran him off to a different leaf. Or maybe there's an infestation. The first leaf that was curled was the inside baby leaf and I finally figured out what was going on because the plant stopped growing (the inside leaves I mean) since the new growth leaf was wrapped up tight. Since there are only about 10 or so leaves on the whole plant, I'm checking every leaf each morning now. If I was just running him off before, maybe that's the end of it but I doubt it... lol. First time growing an eggplant and just planted one for the heck of it.

Thanks for the input.

Ginny

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by Fiishergurl

It's damaging my eggplant leaves pretty badly. I mess up one nest by prying the webbed leaf apart and spraying off whatever it is that it left behind, then next time there is another leaf curled up. This time is the first time I actually saw a spider though, so maybe the other times I just ran him off to a different leaf. Or maybe there's an infestation. The first leaf that was curled was the inside baby leaf and I finally figured out what was going on because the plant stopped growing (the inside leaves I mean) since the new growth leaf was wrapped up tight. Since there are only about 10 or so leaves on the whole plant, I'm checking every leaf each morning now. If I was just running him off before, maybe that's the end of it but I doubt it... lol. First time growing an eggplant and just planted one for the heck of it.

Thanks for the input.

Ginny

No worries but if you let them build one house they wont have to make another.
The mess I have no idea but it may be dried up meals it ate.

Worth

[Fiishergurl]

It's not just making a home, its doing major damage to the plant.

Ginny

[Worth1]

That has to be something else doing that to the plant I have never seen a spider make holes in a plant.

Worth

[Fiishergurl]

Originally Posted by Worth1

That has to be something else doing that to the plant I have never seen a spider make holes in a plant.

Worth

The leaves are sewn up with spider webbing and sucked dry. Maybe spider mites? But what I see doesn't look like the pictures of spider mites or the few spider mites I have seen. But anyways, when I unroll the leaf and pull the webbing apart what is left is a pile of mess (probably from what they ate that passed through) and the leaves are sucked dry and fall apart in that area.

Guess I need to take better pictures before I spray everything off.

Ginny

[Fiishergurl]

Actually you can see the sucked dry type of damage to the leaf in the first picture at the beginning of this topic. That part all disintegrates and then part of the leaf is gone after that which is why you see big patches of missing leaves, but it basically was brittle and fell apart once I unrolled it.

Ginny

[Worth1]

Whatever it s it is gone now.
let's hope your little eggplant survives.

Worth

[Fiishergurl]

Awwwwe, well thanks for the moral support... :-)

Ginny

[Tracydr]

What are the black chunks in the first picture? Hornworm poop?

[Fiishergurl]

Originally Posted by Tracydr

What are the black chunks in the first picture? Hornworm poop?

Nope. No horn worms anywhere on the eggplant. I did have some on my tomato plants but they are history now. Those are either from that spider or from whatever weaved the leaf together (in case that particular spider was an innocent bystander). I keep going out each day to find another section of leaf knitted together with webbing and that black stuff in there. Today was the first day I caught a spider inside the knitted up portion of leaf. Most of the missing parts of the leaves are because whatever is doing this not only knits up the leaf section but then sucks it dry. So when I unroll it and spray all that stuff off, that part of the leave just deteriorates.

Thanks for the help!

Ginny

[Stvrob]

I doubt the spider was doing the damage. He was probably eating the bugs which were dojng the damage.