On 7/18/2011 1:32 PM, Scott Gomez wrote:
> That's a really great portait of what looks like a "crab spider". Also known
> in some locales as a "flower spider". She doesn't know about the glads,
> she's just hoping she's lucky. See her "cousin" at the bottom of this page:
>
> http://winterwoman.net/2008/06/19/crab-spiders/
Thanks for the link. I followed on to a couple of others. It's certainly a crab
spider, which I see covers a lot of
ground in families and species. I've photographed others, but this color was
new and startling to me. Others have been
very pale, even translucent.
As I so often find, the info is at least slightly at odds with what I observe
and shoot.
"Some of the flower spiders are able to change their color over several days,
typically between white and yellow,
depending on the color of the flower on which they are resting." OK, it's on a
green leaf, but we may assume it has
recently been on on of the several yellow flowers nearby.
Or maybe it really knows what color the glad will be? "Many crab spider
species, especially in the family Thomisidae,
have the same bright colors as the flowers on which they sit."
The descriptions say they are free roaming hunters and "They do not wrap their
prey in silk after biting, but instead
remain with the immobilized prey until they have sucked it dry. " So what the
heck is this that my local spider has
built?
<http://galleries.moosemystic.net/MooseFoto/index.php?gallery=Home/Garden_Summer_2011&image=_MG_2669croof70.jpg>
It has stayed in the same place for three days that I know of, and built a
structure of some sort. Doesn't appear to be
anything inside. Could be a shelter from larger predators, such as birds, but
that doesn't fit the descriptions. Doesn't
look like the egg sack pics, and is in the wrong place at the wrong time for
overwintering, although it says some
species have several generations per year.
Puzzlin' Arachnids Moose
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