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• Cellar Spider

Family Pholcidae

Cellar spiders are found worldwide. They prefer to live in dark, damp areas and commonly found within safety of human structures; often times in cellars, attics, garages, crawl spaces, basements, closets, sink cabinets, ceilings, sheds, and messy rooms. They are frequently confused with the Daddy Longlegs spider due to their appearance.

Cellar spiders are gray-brown in color with banding or chevron markings. They have a narrow waist, peanut shaped body that is typically 1/4 to 1/2 inch long. Males are slightly shorter than females. They have 8 long skinny clear legs. They are a web-weaving spider, creating irregular, messy, tangled webs which they hang upside down from.

This species of spider does not tend to hurt people, but will eat almost any kind of insect or bug. Food preferences include moths, mosquitoes, flies, beetles or any insect that may wander into their webbing. When prey is trapped in the web, it is either eaten immediately or quickly wrapped in silk, bitten and injected with a digestive chemical and eater over the next day or so. Cellar spiders do not actually eat the entire prey, but drain the blood from it, afterwards allowing the insect carcass to be cut loose from the web to fall to the ground. These spiders are also known to invade another web, kill the resident spider and claim the web as its own. They are sometimes referred to as the "vibrating spider" because when the web is threatened, the spider vibrates rapidly in a gyrating motion in the web, becoming almost invisible. If the spider continues to feel threatened it will retreat into a corner or drop from its web in order to escape the threat.

Cellar spiders tend to live close to their mate. Females produce up to three clear egg sacs, each containing from 13 to 60 eggs each. These egg sacs are carried in the female's mouth and guarded for several weeks until hatching. Shortly after hatching, the young set out to establish their own webs nearby. The average lifespan of a cellar spider is about 2 years.

While these spiders can be beneficial due to their diet of other insects, they can also be considered a nuisance pest. A call to Long Pest Control can develop an Integrated Pest Control program to eliminate the sightings and provide an environment free of unwanted pests year round.