It is too easy to dismiss the walk around Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve as a stroll in an excess of greenery. Sea hibiscus trees, Portia trees and wayside mangroves line the pebbly trail. Tall grasses, short sea hollies and occasional Crinum lilies break up the periphery between level land and rocky slope, luring the unwary to risk a tumble down the embarkment into a muddy tangle.
In the gaps formed by sluice gates and the sheltered seats of hides, the elevated pools can seem bare but for a profusion of rodong snails in slow creep. Egrets in dazzling white are evident to all but the blindest starers, but it's likely that the mottled plumage and countershaded tones of countless little waders and even the much larger grey and purple herons escape the casual eye. The plovers in particular, save a few who still maintain their brilliant courtship colours, can teem before you in obscurity, bobbing and scuttling in small measure by the hundreds like ripples in the sun-baked mud.
Few probably miss the noisy and the brazen. The cackling kingfishers, chirruping squirrels and insane pied fantails suffer not the bashfulness of shy ducks. Likewise the hordes of water monitors who use the same track on their daily sojourns from feast to sordid feast, inspiring delight in some and incorrugible fear in others.
The heat may oppress and to some a tree is a tree is a tree. But a slower pace by the fringe and a willingness to squat in mock defecation promises the possibility of smaller treasures. Every square foot is a hopeful harbour for countless crawlers and clingers who make a living from the green crust. Mealy bugs and planthoppers with outrageous garb line juicy stems in drunken stupor. Little locusts crowd together, a gene pool for the selection of fanged hunters.
And the spiders. They lurk behind leaves, shelter in tiny crevices on tree trunks, hide on the bare bark in plain sight, dangle from branches and leap from branch to bough. Many reveal themselves only when one is still and willing to stoop to their level of life in the undergrowth. But a few are bold and blasé, fretting not the attention of sweaty apes. A male lynx spider (above left), legs minus one a-bristling, straddles a grass blade, palps swollen for a hasty insemination. By day, the jumpers are in their element, eyes alert to food and foe from all sides. Some are sleek hunters with racing stripes; others stare from rotund bodies that swell with golden speckle.
In the light shrubbery by the side, there was a large web spanning three feet or more. It took the form of a suspended tent with a canopy held aloft by numerous support threads. The rooflike dome is dense with closely-woven radial lines, while above and below, a looser network of webs secure the structure to the surrounding vegetation. A shower of dry husks, the split pericarps of some nearby tree, decorate the suspended mound with khaki shades and help obscure its builder, a female Cyrtophora moluccensis spider over an inch long.
According to arachnologist Joseph Koh, C. moluccensis is a species associated with coastal habitats. It occurs from India to Japan and Australia in open, disturbed habitat such as the edge of forests and inland fringe of mangroves. The specimen we saw was alone, but in some regions, this spider is known to form loose communities of up to 400 individuals in massive nodal webs covering 15 square metres. One observer in 1926 reported seeing a colony spanning over 1,000 square feet. It might have looked something like this monster web found in Texas recently. In Australasia and the Pacific Islands, the spiderly swarms can become so large that gardeners throw gasoline-soaked coconut fronds at them before they can swamp the flower beds.
Like those of their cousins the Nephilines, the webs of C. moluccensis may host tiny kleptoparasitic Argyrodes spiders. Males are reported to live in a smaller orb built into the silken tangle above or below the female's web. And as with most arachnids, mating is a hazardous affair where the sperm donor risks at best callous indifference to being thrown unceremoniously onto the ground or consumed in mid-coitus. As I crouched to beseech the lady to adopt a more engaging pose, her octet of little eyes peered with beady disdain, outraged at my duck's willingness to finger a strange dame. Her bite, while not deadly, is said to be a real pain, so I took care to fondle only her rear end, wishing not the intense ardour of a liquid kiss from the spiderwoman...
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