RE: Spiders or mites inside succulent seedpod?

The babies are definitely spiders; they have a well-defined abdomen and cephalothorax (unlike insects the head and thorax in true spiders are fused into one section).  Actually, the seedpod doesn't look like a seedpod at all to me; at least as far as I could see there were no visible veins or plant structures. It looked like a spider egg case with a longish "hanger" for lack of a better word; very cocoon-like. Perhaps there were leaves or bracts that the spider incorporated into the egg case, covering the stem also with silk for stability? Some moths for example incorporate a leaf into their cocoon, putting silk along the petiole and fastening it firmly to the branch.

Bob Beer    sazci@hotmail.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alice laughed. 'There's not use trying,' she said: `one can't believe impossible things.'
'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. `When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast...'
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From:  "Richard Starkeson" <rstarkesonmed@gmail.com>
Reply-To:  rstarkesonmed@gmail.com
To:  medit-plants@ucdavis.edu
Subject:  Spiders or mites inside succulent seedpod?
Date:  Sat, 3 Feb 2007 16:20:20 -0800

I encountered a 6-foot plant in Mexico in December  (don't have a photo, and can't give a good description now), (succulent, cactus or euphorb -  that narrows it down to about 1000 species), with what looked like clusters of small round seedpods at the top - dried and weathered, about
0.5 cm id diameter.  I picked one, and later opened it up, looking for seeds - instead found what looked like a mass of insect eggs and along with what looked like baby spiders, brownish,  about 0.5 mm in size, a couple slightly larger that were red-orange looking, and a mass of webbing..

Photos (not a good enough lens for this sort of thing, but - - ) at
http://public.fotki.com/richard1124/insects/hatching-in-seedpod/

Does anyone know what these were, and what happened to the seeds that one would have expected to find in the seedpod?
I didn't think spiders or mites ate seeds.
Spiders?  Mites?  Predatory mites?








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