Rant

Perusing the search engine to identify various spiders I repeatedly got pestcontrol.about.com shoved in my face. So I opened the page and got How Dangerous is the Wolf Spider shoved in my face. Glancing at that I got innuendo of lycosids possibly being one of the top 10 most dangerous.

So I checked the authority. Everyone always does this, right? Lisa Jo Lupo, pest control expert. Checking her credentials it seems she has a degree in journalism. To quote:
"Lisa graduated with Honors from The Ohio State University with a Bachelor's degree in Journalism. In her years in the Pest Control industry, she has participated in various training sessions and courses."

Well, if you have ever wondered about toilet spiders, clock spiders, daddy long legs is the deadliest and so on, Just maybe some of the stories come from top flight experts like Lisa Jo.

I'd certainly put more trust in the average lycosid than in her obviously vast knowledge of 'pests'.

As an addendum, can anyone tell me why a lycosid would be classified as a pest? For that matter, why would animals that are experts at pest control be called pests by pest control people who have journalists for experts?

Since I'm following the circlebird on it's trip up it's own wazoo, let's take an average possibly deadly spider bite from a lycosid as a test scenario.
Your average lay persons response would be to do a quick check on the internet and find someone like Lisa Jo who might recommend a company to spray deadly pesticides all over the environment while the average ER doc would call poison control (which, as a rule, does not have Lisa Jo's working for them), debrid and clean the bite, prescribe paracetomol and suggest to call back in the morning.
Meanwhile the average person who isn't spider clueless would usually have the initial reaction of HOW IN HECK DID YOU MANAGE TO GET IT TO BITE YOU? followed by, can I have it?

PS Dear Lisa Jo Lupo, may I suggest you get a little first hand knowledge of what you are writing about. Grab your yellow pad and pen and go sit on a Pepsini

Lol Journalism, meaning she runs to car wrecks and capitalizes on mangled victims. She's a vulture, and will do anything for attention.

I totally know what you're talking about!

I'm not quiet about the fact that I'm no expert on spiders, but I enjoy learning about them. Unfortunately the problem I keep running into is that much of the information I find (especially on the internet, surprise surprise,) is either wildly inaccurate or just plain disagrees with other sources. People will insist to me that Wolf Spiders are not only dangerous, but get ridiculously huge. But the only Wolf Spider that gets so large is Hogna carolinensis, right? Anyway, I digress.

I find that most of this misinformation comes from, yeah, either pest control sites or bloated media articles. I'm under the impression that pest control exaggerates facts in order to promote business, but the media just hypes up myths to get a reaction from the public.

At any rate, it all ticks me off for all the reasons you mention. No wonder nobody I know likes arachnology! Everybody keeps getting this sludge shoved in their face! I have so much trouble finding accurate information, trying to weed through all of the internet's "spider gossip", and ultimately trying to convince my friends and family that much of what they've heard on spiders is untrue.

Does any of you have like, a book or something you could recommend to me?

The Snark said:

Perusing the search engine to identify various spiders I repeatedly got pestcontrol.about.com shoved in my face. So I opened the page and got How Dangerous is the Wolf Spider shoved in my face. Glancing at that I got innuendo of lycosids possibly being one of the top 10 most dangerous.

So I checked the authority. Everyone always does this, right? Lisa Jo Lupo, pest control expert. Checking her credentials it seems she has a degree in journalism. To quote:
"Lisa graduated with Honors from The Ohio State University with a Bachelor's degree in Journalism. In her years in the Pest Control industry, she has participated in various training sessions and courses."

Well, if you have ever wondered about toilet spiders, clock spiders, daddy long legs is the deadliest and so on, Just maybe some of the stories come from top flight experts like Lisa Jo.

I'd certainly put more trust in the average lycosid than in her obviously vast knowledge of 'pests'.

As an addendum, can anyone tell me why a lycosid would be classified as a pest? For that matter, why would animals that are experts at pest control be called pests by pest control people who have journalists for experts?

Since I'm following the circlebird on it's trip up it's own wazoo, let's take an average possibly deadly spider bite from a lycosid as a test scenario.
Your average lay persons response would be to do a quick check on the internet and find someone like Lisa Jo who might recommend a company to spray deadly pesticides all over the environment while the average ER doc would call poison control (which, as a rule, does not have Lisa Jo's working for them), debrid and clean the bite, prescribe paracetomol and suggest to call back in the morning.
Meanwhile the average person who isn't spider clueless would usually have the initial reaction of HOW IN HECK DID YOU MANAGE TO GET IT TO BITE YOU? followed by, can I have it?

PS Dear Lisa Jo Lupo, may I suggest you get a little first hand knowledge of what you are writing about. Grab your yellow pad and pen and go sit on a Pepsini

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LOL wolf spider's - a pest! Bwahaha, ohhh that's a good one. Thanks for a laugh snark.

BTW, your comment about people verifying the authority on a subject is exactly why my quote signature is what it is...it is appaling how quickly most people accept unverified or completely bogus info.

I've come to like the wiki more and more. I find a page with the proper heading/title and preferably the correct name of the animal. Before I read further I dial down to the bottom of the page and check the citations/references. It takes all of 2 seconds to note numerous citations and take note of the degrees associated with the authorities cited. I usually include a glance through for names like Vetter, Crawford, Senkenberg, Jaeger, Arachnological Society etc. With wiki it's no different than selecting products in a market and reading the ingredients label. Be a sensible consumer.
Try it yourself. Seach Nephila and you get a huge load of noise about the wonders of the golden orb weaver silk without a latin word on the page. Then search using a full proper name like Nephila Clavata. Very sparse reading but zap to the bottom of the page and there you go. Platnick, Museum of natural history. Follow the link.
That's what I did with the page I posted about, coming up with Lisa Jo Waffletoes

Dizzle, Massey put forth some interesting propositions as his take on Darwin's theory. Unfortunately he rubbed christians the wrong way, got himself blacklisted, and had to fight for credibility in his later career. I recall a small comedy. In a decidedly christian oriented bookstore I found a publication of Massey's rubbing shoulders with a pamphlet of Alan Watts on the 10 cents table.

The Snark said:

I've come to like the wiki more and more. I find a page with the proper heading/title and preferably the correct name of the animal. Before I read further I dial down to the bottom of the page and check the citations/references. It takes all of 2 seconds to note numerous citations and take note of the degrees associated with the authorities cited. I usually include a glance through for names like Vetter, Crawford, Senkenberg, Jaeger, Arachnological Society etc. With wiki it's no different than selecting products in a market and reading the ingredients label. Be a sensible consumer.
Try it yourself. Seach Nephila and you get a huge load of noise about the wonders of the golden orb weaver silk without a latin word on the page. Then search using a full proper name like Nephila Clavata. Very sparse reading but zap to the bottom of the page and there you go. Platnick, Museum of natural history. Follow the link.
That's what I did with the page I posted about, coming up with Lisa Jo Waffletoes

Dizzle, Massey put forth some interesting propositions as his take on Darwin's theory. Unfortunately he rubbed christians the wrong way, got himself blacklisted, and had to fight for credibility in his later career. I recall a small comedy. In a decidedly christian oriented bookstore I found a publication of Massey's rubbing shoulders with a pamphlet of Alan Watts on the 10 cents table.

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Wiki is good actually if you take the time to do like you said and check the source IME. I find Massey interesting...even if many people debate his credibility. Pretty neat where you found that though lol.

Ha, I recently had to comment a bunch on an article on a recent "banana spider in UK!!!!!11" scare that was secondarily posted to a Gawker-affiliate site I check occasionally. Someone got into it with me b/c I said there was no consulting any qualified person for ID, just unwarranted panic. Cue the "...but a pest control expert said..." comments.

Edit to add: Anyone from OSU should REALLY know better--with all those former Uetz lab members about, there are probably more arachnologists in Ohio than anywhere, and they're all lycosid specialists! I'm sure someone from her home institution is deeply ashamed.

An interesting noodle crawled through my brain just now. Over the years I have known two people, quite well actually, that worked in pest crontrol for Orkin. I think it was Orkin. Their trucks had that little bobble head guy with a hammer about to explain the facts of life to a rat.
Anyway, as it so happens, neither of these 20 year old+ guys were high school graduates.

Cruising Orkin and other pest control companies I check their employment opportunities and see they have an average of a 3 week course each year for their pest control employees. All about how to apply the various traps and poisons. I'm not seeing anything about how to identify the pests. Please feel free to prove me wrong from what I've experienced and what I am seeing, the average burger flipper at McDouche has about the same critter identification training.

Now we can add to this identification of pests. It seems 'pest' experts, the real ones, suffer from some sort of insecurity complex. The greater level of expertise, the more insecure they become. When you get into the very top of the field and you show the magna cum laude crowd a critter their response at best is, it MIGHT be, it's in the XXX genus, or I need to have a better look at it's YYY. Unlike pest control people, the real top flight experts apparently go total brain fart when it gets down to the nitty gritty.
The test subjects of this survey were Vetter, Crawford, and Jaeger. I'll give Vetter credit, he positively identified a Latrodectus Hesperus as a L Hesperus, providing it was actually found at a certain location, and Jaeger did ID a Venetoria without hesitation. Crawford seems to want a 3D high res graphic image in full color of the critters eyes, genitalia, feet, and hat size before he would be positive of an ID. Maybe we should suggest to these critter challenged guys that they take the pest control critter ID classes?

---------- Post added 09-18-2014 at 07:07 AM ----------

jecraque said:

Ha, I recently had to comment a bunch on an article on a recent "banana spider in UK!!!!!11" scare that was secondarily posted to a Gawker-affiliate site I check occasionally. Someone got into it with me b/c I said there was no consulting any qualified person for ID, just unwarranted panic. Cue the "...but a pest control expert said..." comments.

Edit to add: Anyone from OSU should REALLY know better--with all those former Uetz lab members about, there are probably more arachnologists in Ohio than anywhere, and they're all lycosid specialists! I'm sure someone from her home institution is deeply ashamed.

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My suggestion is ask the person where the expert they are citing did their advanced biology studies and post grad work on aranaea genitalia and other specific anatomy and under which expert as you would like to take the course and be as capable at ID as those pest control people are.
Speaking for myself, I just ask here on AB. When we get in a muddle I'll send off the requisite photos from the different angles to whom I think is the best expert. UNFORTUNATELY, a response from Crawford usually starts with 'It may be XXX if YY and ZZ and AAA and BBB ...', a response from Vetter will get 'I Think... can you send it to me' and a response from Jaeger more often that not is, 'Were presently recategorizing things and I'll get back to you in 5 or 10 years'.

PS By the way, and please excuse me for being a pedant here, if any of you do request an identification from the real experts, please keep in mind they are 1, usually up to their arses in alligators work load wise, 2, you MUST send ALL the correct pertinent information (no, a couple of shots with a cell phone doesn't cut it) and 3, address the expert correctly using the proper format and their titles.

yer never going to get rid of stupid people because stupid people dont listen

The Snark said:

Now we can add to this identification of pests. It seems 'pest' experts, the real ones, suffer from some sort of insecurity complex. The greater level of expertise, the more insecure they become. When you get into the very top of the field and you show the magna cum laude crowd a critter their response at best is, it MIGHT be, it's in the XXX genus, or I need to have a better look at it's YYY. Unlike pest control people, the real top flight experts apparently go total brain fart when it gets down to the nitty gritty.
The test subjects of this survey were Vetter, Crawford, and Jaeger. I'll give Vetter credit, he positively identified a Latrodectus Hesperus as a L Hesperus, providing it was actually found at a certain location, and Jaeger did ID a Venetoria without hesitation. Crawford seems to want a 3D high res graphic image in full color of the critters eyes, genitalia, feet, and hat size before he would be positive of an ID. Maybe we should suggest to these critter challenged guys that they take the pest control critter ID classes?

Click to expand...

Ha!
Pretty sure the insecurity must stem from actually knowing all the possibilities! Pest control people seem to think there are 10-15 spider species out there...

Somewhat off the subject. Regarding corresponding to the real experts.
From bitter experience and years in academic circles, if anyone wishes to correspond with one of the real hot shots there are some pretty rigid rules you need to follow.

To give a typical example, from having watched numerous profs and docs. They set aside a portion of their day to correspondence. Providing whether they have a secretary or not this can vary slightly.

S/he opens the letter and instantly checks to see if s/he is addressed correctly. Dr., Professor etc. If not, into the trash.
Then a glance down the page. Is the format easily readable paragraphed or a slop glop. Punctuation is noted. Glop and no capitals where required, into the trash. The signature format is often checked, If improper or disrespectful, trash. When this vetting is done the letter is set aside.

After the trash can is overflowing, s/he grabs the set asides.
Letters from colleagues get set aside. Sometimes into two piles. The small pile is people the expert can't stand but should get some sort of reply.
Rambling uninformed and poorly formatted only gets a glance. If the person's interest is peaked it may get set aside for later. Otherwise trash.
Next the short concise intelligible queries get read and answered. Usually in a very terse sentence or two. All that is needed for the average student.

I mention this for two reasons. If you want a reply and not just fill the experts trash can, FOLLOW THE RULES. Additionally, a LOT of experts are close to fuming growling by the time they get to the correspondence part of their day. More pissed off, more critical and less inclined to reply to casual questions.
The second reason is too many disrespectful crap and crud questions and the expert quits replying to casual inquiries. You screw it up for us all.

These "journalists" and other so-called authorities are the real pests in my opinion. I wanted to get into journalism once upon a time and researching one's subject matter was a big part of it. One had to make sure they were getting it right so as not to look like a complete buffoon. Now, it's all about sensationalism. They don't research the truth and they don't want it for that matter. Affirming most peoples' fear of spiders will get more clicks than setting these fears straight; and in this case if she's now part of a pest-control company, of course she would want to affirm those fears--money money money amirite.
I try and set people straight whenever I get the chance but most of the time the conversation ends with them visibly shivering and saying "I don't care. They're creepy/scary/gross" and they've got people like her telling them they're right to fear them. The irrational widespread fear of harmless spiders is extremely frustrating.

Belle Fury said:

These "journalists" and other so-called authorities are the real pests in my opinion. I wanted to get into journalism once upon a time and researching one's subject matter was a big part of it. One had to make sure they were getting it right so as not to look like a complete buffoon. Now, it's all about sensationalism. They don't research the truth and they don't want it for that matter. Affirming most peoples' fear of spiders will get more clicks than setting these fears straight; and in this case if she's now part of a pest-control company, of course she would want to affirm those fears--money money money amirite.
I try and set people straight whenever I get the chance but most of the time the conversation ends with them visibly shivering and saying "I don't care. They're creepy/scary/gross" and they've got people like her telling them they're right to fear them. The irrational widespread fear of harmless spiders is extremely frustrating.

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I'm not doing myself any favors. Blinders on. Perspective limited. Close mind. Focus on one small objective. I'm not doing myself any favors here. I'm closing my world. Limiting my mind.
Lisa Jo Lupo, journalist: she has participated in various training sessions and courses.
What did you learn, Lisa? What do you really know? What knowledge did you seek? What rocks did you turn over? What questions did you ask? Where is the investigative journalism? What favors did you do for yourself in the long run?

Suggested reading, Lisa: The Oration on the Dignity of Man (De hominis dignitate) by Pico della Mirandola
Don't let the renaissance simply be something that happened to other people.

Snark I am starting to really love your posts just saying

Sent from my RM-860_nam_usa_100 using Tapatalk

That oration by Mirandola was pure genius inspiration. Up there with Einstein and the backwards clock. Mandatory reading in most philosophy classes. It's as if he documented what Socrates was thinking.