Ant-Mimic Jumping Spider
While coming up the hill on my way home from work[1], I spotted what looked, at first, like a medium-sized ant. It didn’t look quite right, though, so I caught it and brought it home. It turned out to be this:
Archive for the ‘Spiders’ Category.
Female Crab Spider
Back in November, I posted pictures of a male crab spider, today we have some pictures of a female, for contrast. She probably isn’t exactly the same species, but she’s fairly close.
Elongated Running Crab Spider
I’d like to say right now that, if you want to get pictures of all the bugs in your house, you really can’t beat having a 2-3 year old child helping you find them. Sam found this spider on the rug just a couple of weeks ago (in January)[*], and brought it to me alive and undamaged. It even has all of its legs for once!
Cobweb spiders
This is a species of spider that has successfully colonized the dark corners of our house: so far S_ found me three specimens to photograph in December and January (two females and a male). I could tell that one of them was male because he had enormously swollen pedipalps, which I understand means he was ready to mate. He was within a few inches of one of the females, so we suspect that he was courting her when he was caught.
Male funnel-web spider
Kitchen linoleum is a great place to find spiders - they stand out so well, particularly on light-colored floors, and usually they are far enough away from cover that catching them is a snap[1]. This fellow was scurrying across the floor, and once I caught him, he kind of scrunched up with his legs pulled in:
Male Goldenrod Crab Spider
This crab spider was on the kitchen counter on July 5[1], strolling along just as bold as you please.
It appears to be a male goldenrod crab spider, Misumena vatia.
Jumping Spider
Little Brown Job
When birdwatching, there are a lot of what S. calls “little brown jobs”, little nondescript brown birds (sparrows and the like) that an amateur doesn’t have a prayer of identifying on-the-fly. Well, there is the same problem with jumping spiders, like this one:
This is in the family Salticidae, which is a huge group of arachnid “little brown jobs” (about 4,400 species identified). There are at least two species around here (brown ones like this one, and black ones with white stripes that I hope to get a picture of later). Whether this is just two species, or two groups of umpteen species each, I don’t know.
These little guys don’t build webs, instead they charge around pouncing on things. As you can see in the next picture, they have really good eyes for a spider:
Isn’t that a sweet face?[1] They are believed to have full binocular vision (depth perception is so important when you are planning on pouncing on something), and they can jump a couple of inches. This particular one sat for the photos, and then abruptly leapt completely out of the dish and scurried off. They’re kind of like the ant lions in that they either don’t move at all, or move so quickly that they almost seem to teleport from point to point.
Male mesh-weaving spider
The spider below had made a minimalist mesh-style web on the frame of our back door, so I took a bunch of pictures in-place with the improvised macro lens. By bracing against the surface of the door and taking lots of pictures, I managed to get a few that showed decent detail, but it was a lot of effort. Keep in mind that this is a little guy, only about 5 millimeters long. If there had not been a surface to brace against, there is no way I could have held the camera still enough to get an unblurred photograph.
But, not to worry! We have so much forgotten junk in the lab, there must be something that can be used to hold a camera steady, right?
Right! I would like you to meet “The Beast”, about 10 pounds of the finest brass machining the 19th century had to offer![1]
I found this old microscope frame stuck away in the back of a cabinet, along with a bunch of other microscope parts that were probably scrapped out sometime before I was born. This one was obviously the stage and mount for a dissecting scope, the mount is a nice 3-dimension positioner, moving up/down/forward/back/left/right with several inches of travel in each direction. With a bit of adaptation (mainly just getting a 1/4-20 capscrew to mount the camera, and drilling one hole so that the screw would fit), the camera and macro lens mounted up just fine.
European House Spider, Cluster Fly
Come in to my parlor
said the spider
to the fly