Spider Refuge

Trees shrouded in ghostly cocoons line the edges of a submerged farm field in the Pakistani village of Sindh, where 2010′s massive floods drove millions of spiders into the trees to spin their webs.Beginning last July, unprecedented monsoons dropped nearly ten years’ worth of rainfall on Pakistan in one week, swelling the country’s rivers. The water was slow to recede, creating vast pools of stagnant water across the countryside.

“It was a very slow-motion kind of disaster,” said Russell Watkins, a multimedia editor with the U.K.’s Department for International Development (DFID), the organization tasked with managing Britain’s overseas aid programs.

According to Watkins, who photographed the trees during a trip to Pakistan last December, people in Sindh said they’d never seen this phenomenon before the flooding.

Cotton Candy Tree

Seen in December 2010, a young girl stands next to a tree covered in spider webs in Sindh, Pakistan, near the intersection of two roads that had only recently reemerged from floodwaters.

At the height of the crisis, the flooded region covered an area the size of England. Nearly 2,000 people died during the disaster and 20 million people were affected, according to the Pakistani government.

“More people were affected by the flooding than the combined total of the Boxing Day Indian Ocean tsunami, 2005 Pakistan earthquake, [2010] Haiti earthquake, and Hurricane Katrina,” John Barrett, head of DFID’s Flood Response Team, said in a statement.

As part of the international response, DFID mounted the U.K.’s largest humanitarian operation yet.

Webbed Trees

The giant spider webs in Sindh, Pakistan, sometimes stretched from tree to tree, as seen above in December 2010.

“Any kind of vegetation that was above ground was affected, literally every kind of tree and bush,” Watkins said of the widespread spider webs.

While unusual, trees cocooned in spider webs are not unprecedented. Scientists have reported similar webs in other parts of the world, the tropics in particular. In 2007, for instance, a superintendent at Lake Tawokoni State Park in Texas discovered a giant spider web among the trees.

Watkins said he didn’t know which type of spider was responsible for the tree cocoons in Sindh. But in the case of Lake Tawokoni, scientists determined that dozens of spider species were spinning the communal webs.

Natural Net?

A spider web enshrouds a tree in Sindh, Pakistan, in a December 2010 photograph.

The unusual cocoons were a mixed blessing: The huge webs ultimately killed many of the trees they covered, perhaps by reducing the amount of sunlight reaching their leaves.

But for a while, the webs also seemed to help trap more mosquitoes in the region, thereby reducing the risk of malaria, Watkins said.

Normally after a flood, the remaining stagnant water provides more opportunities for mosquitoes to breed. But people in Sindh reported far fewer mosquitoes than expected following the recent crisis.

Death Shrouds

Cocooned trees line the banks of a flooded rice paddy in Sindh, Pakistan, in December 2010. According to Watkins, the subsequent deaths of many of the web-covered trees has created a new problem for the residents of Sindh.

“The area is incredibly hot in summer, and there is very little natural foliage cover for people to use as shade to begin with,” he said. Without the trees lining roads and fields, there will be little refuge from the summer sun.

Arachnid Islands

Trees rising above the floodwaters became safe havens for web-spinning spiders in Sindh, Pakistan, as seen in December 2010.

Most of the floodwaters in Sindh and the surrounding region have now receded, and people are slowly returning to what’s left of their towns and villages.

“Virtually 90 percent of displaced populations in Pakistan have returned, but most of the communities that were there were completely destroyed,” Watkins said.