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Wednesday, July 10, 2019

Cool Vineyard Sighting

This is not exactly a vineyard sighting, but a sighting on our vineyard cuttings. I knew this was a harvestman, a good guy in the vineyard. I always thought it was a spider, but looking on the Internet, I learned that although the harvestman is in the Arachnid class, and related to the spiders, it is not a spider. I was intrigued by the orange things that the harvestman had on it's legs and took a picture of it. I thought that it might be eggs. Wrong again. The orange egg looking like structures on the legs of the harvestman are parasitizing mites!
Here is the scoop of the harvestman. It is a member of the order Opiliones which includes five suborders Cyphophthalmi, Eupnoi, Dyspnoi, Laniatores, and Tetrophthalmi.1 The North American harvestmen, also called daddy longlegs belongs to the suborder Eupnoi. The harvestmen have no silk glands and therefore do not build webs. Their bodies are round or oval in shape and appear to consist of just one segment or section because the connection between the cephalothorax and abdomen is broad.
Harvestmen in the vineyard are good because they are predators as well as scavengers. They are generally carnivorous, feeding on live invertebrate prey including aphids, beetles, caterpillars, earthworms, flies, mites, small slugs, snails and spiders.2
Reference:
1. Wikipedia, Opiliones.
2. Aggie Horticulture TAMU, Beneficials in the Garden.

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