​As a sleepy tree frog awoke in the coming dusk of a muggy September evening, its bulbous eyes would have noticed something odd about its usual view from the fieldstone wall at the entrance to Picnic Point. An alien invasion of more than 30 bobbing lights bore down swiftly upon its stone cubby, giving it no choice but to retract back into its daytime guise of being a particularly rotund clump of lichen. To the frog’s relief, the lights mostly sailed right by in the hands of arachnid enthusiasts making a bee-line for the webs strung upon the stone wall’s gates. Puffs of corn starch mist illuminated by eager beams lit up a tapestry of silk between the dark cast-iron bars. 

​Harvestmen (daddy longlegs) researcher Guilherme Gainett led us on a captivating night-time hike with help from spider researcher Siddharth Kulkarni.  The two Sharma Lab experts wove their own web of arachnid facts and stories around the countless eight-legged critters we were finding. Harvestmen and spiders, while they look similar, are two distinct varieties of arachnid. Contrary to popular myth, harvestmen are not venomous like their spider relatives. They also have only one discernible body segment (see picture below). Spiders, in contrast, have a distinct thorax separated from their abdomen by a narrow, flexible waist called a pedicel. Additionally, harvestmen lack the ability to make silk and cannot make webs like their spider cousins.