Category: spiders

Spot the spider!

May 16, 2025 • 8:15 am

We have only one set of Readers’ Wildlife left, so I’m putting in a “Spot the. .  .” feature from Neil Taylor of Cambridge in the UK.  But please send in your photos, folks.

Neil says this:

The first photo is a tree stump draped in spider webs in which a spider is hiding. . . .I’m not a spider expert but I think it is a running crab spider (Philodromus sp.).  Quite a beautiful little thing.

Can you spot it? I’ll post the reveal at 11 a.m. Chicago time. I think this is of medium difficulty. Please do not reveal in the comments where it is; let others have the fun of finding it.

Readers’ wildlife photos

April 11, 2025 • 8:15 am

Today Mark Sturtevant has returned with pictures of diverse critters, including insects, amphibians, and gastropods. Mark’s IDs, links, and narrative are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Here are more pictures of various critters in my area, which is in eastern Michigan.

The first picture is a young treefrog, and it is about as big as your thumbnail. This will be one of two sister species in the area, either Cope’s Gray Treefrog, Dryophytes chrysoscelis, or the Gray Treefrog, D. versicolor. They are commonly green in green surroundings. If it is the latter species, then it is tetraploid and that is why it is a separate species from the former. Polyploidy is one way to quickly form a new species, and this is a classic example.

Next up are a couple of our local snails, the Brown-lipped snails, Cepaea nemoralis. I was not sure what to do with them, and so I did this. These snails were introduced from Europe, and are now widespread in the U.S.

The next several pictures are manual focus stacks that were staged on the ‘ol dining room table. First up is a young Flower Crab Spider. That name applies to many species of crab spiders that often lurk on flowers to capture prey. Based on its eye arrangement and prominent hairs, I am pretty sure this one is Mecaphasa sp.

The jumping spiders that follow are species that I’ve shown here many times. The first is a Dimorphic Jumping Spider, Maevia inclemens. This one was very fidgety and it needed something to eat to help settle down. The lights in the eyes of the first picture came from an LED modeling light to help me to focus. I liked the look and so I did not remove the highlighting in post-processing. In the second picture you can see reflections of my fingertips in the large frontal eyes.

Another common spider is the Bold Jumping Spider, Phidippus audax. This youngster was very easy to work with.

The weird creature shown in the next picture is one of our Harvestmen, I think Phalangium opilio. I don’t see this species very often even though it’s distributed all around me. I like them because males have really long pedipalps and horned chelicerae. In some populations, the chelicerae horns are much longer than what is seen here.

Next is a moth that flew inside the house one evening. I think it’s a new species for me – the Lunate Zale Moth, Zale lunata.

And finally, I spotted this large caterpillar one day when out with the cameras. This is a mature Polyphemus Moth larva, Antheraea polyphemus, and it will become maybe the 2nd or 3rd largest moth in the U.S. For the portrait picture, I was trying to get it to look all haughty and Offended, as caterpillars like this often look very offended when being handled. But instead, this one looked like it was Eevil and plotting something, Mwa ha ha haa.

Readers’ wildlife photos

February 28, 2025 • 8:15 am

Regular Mark Sturtevant has sent us a passel of insect and spider photos. Mark’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his pictures by clicking on them.

I come with another set of pictures of arthropods. Mostly orb-weaver spiders, actually. The pictures were taken in various parks near where I live, which is in Michigan.

Let’s begin with the large bee shown in the first two pictures. I was rather puzzled about the identity of this bee. Although it resembles a bumble bee, it turns out to be a male Eastern Carpenter Bee, Xylocopa virginica. I don’t recall ever seeing a male foraging at flowers, but I do see them hovering around nest entrances. The females are commonly seen out foraging, and are easily recognized by their shiny black abdomen and large all-black head. Female carpenter bees are well known for boring large holes into soft wood, which they provision with pollen for their young in a series of stacked cells. In preparing for this post, I learned that these bees are often not solitary (I thought they were!), but instead the can form small social groups where their duties depend on their age which can be up to three years. Older females are dominant and they perform all duties and most of the egg laying. Younger females do less provisioning and egg laying while tending to guard the nest entrance, and the youngest females pretty much just eat provisions and provide no services. Although I carry multiple degrees in Entomology (it’s a long story), this hobby and posting in WEIT has taught me a lot about the lives of insects.

Now we move on to orb-weaver spiders. There are many species in my area, and many members of this group stay hidden near their web by day. Some of them are cussedly hard to tell apart, but I do believe the first one is a Shamrock Orbweaver, Araneus trifolium. There are two other very similar species, but I rely on differences in the leg banding and markings under the abdomen to suggest this ID.

Next up is a Furrow Orbweaver, Larinioides cornutus. These common spiders are specialists in concealment since by day they usually stay in a tightly woven hide-away in a curled leaf.

The next two pictures are of Spotted Orbweavers, Neoscona crucifera. The first one really really impressed me since it managed to catch a large cicada.

The large and colorful garden spiders, or Argiopes, are always a favorite. These will sit out in the center of their web during the day. Although the other orb-weavers may be found anywhere, the Argiopes seem more patchy in distribution now-a-days, with only certain areas where they are common. The species shown here is the Banded Garden Spider, Argiope trifasciata.

Moving away from spiders, the next picture shows a Great Spreadwing Damselfly, Archilestes grandis, which is the largest damselfly in the U.S. That is not to say that it’s a large insect, but it is the size of a smallish dragonfly and so it is way bigger than all other damsels in the U.S. The linked picture will show you. This is originally a species from the southern portion of the country, but it has moved farther north and they are now common in a certain park near Ann Arbor. I go to this park every year or two with the specific goal of photographing this insect and of course whatever else may show up.

Bringing up the rear are pictures of grasshoppers. First is a mating pair of Differential Grasshoppers (Melanoplus differentialis). It was a little surprising that they could be coaxed onto my finger for this picture.

Some time ago I came across an internet meme that pointed out an amusing pareidolia with a grasshopper, which was that its sternum bore what looks like a lion face with sunglasses. I recognized that the species was a member of the spur-throated subfamily, Melanoplinae (See? My entomology degrees are useful), and the Differential ‘hopper and many other local species belong in it. So the last picture is of two spur-throated grasshoppers, and they each have the feline pattern. The one on the left is the Differential Grasshopper, and the right one is a Red-legged Grasshopper (M. femurrubrum). I expect that Jerry will especially like this last bit! [JAC: Cat faces!]

In closing, on occasion I am asked about the equipment that I use for photography. That really does not matter, although these pictures were generally taken with an old and very worn Canon crop sensor body (t5i), which is cheap these days, and a nice macro lens (Canon 100mm, f/2.8L), but there are less expensive macro lenses that are just as good or even better. If anyone would like to try this form of photography, however, I would suggest that they look into OM system cameras. OM cameras (formerly Olympus) have features that make them especially effective at macrophotography, and if I had a way to do it all over again I would not think twice about switching to that brand. Also, for what you get I believe they tend to be cheaper than other camera models. But it is hard to go wrong with cameras, and you can easily modify a regular lens to be used as a macro lens. What really matters, more than the choice of camera, is the diffuser on the external flash. That is a whole other subject that can take a lot of discussion. I lie awake at night worrying about whether my diffuser could be better.

Readers’ wildlife photos

December 17, 2024 • 8:15 am

Send in your photos, folks!

Today we have some arthropod photos from regular Mark Sturtevant, whose IDs and captions are indented. You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Hello again from Eastern Michigan. Here are various insects and spiders that I had photographed in my area from two summers ago. My last post left us at a very productive park near where I work, and this post starts with some things that I’d found during that same outing.

We start with a boldly marked Stink Bug called the Anchor Stink Bug (Stiretrus anchorago).

The field in this park always has numerous Chinese Mantids (Tenodera sinensis). This being early August, they had not yet reached adult-hood so here is a nymph. By early fall I can expect to see many huge adults in the field. It seems guaranteed. I suspect that some years ago, someone had set out many of their oothecae (egg pods), and this thriving population remains the result.

Overlooking the field was a hardwood forest, and I was quite pleased that many interesting kinds of critters were in it. Among these were weird planthoppers from the family Derbidae, which are one of the many good things found under tree leaves. These lack common names, so I gave them my own. First, here is what I call the Flat Derbid (Anotia uhleri) because when fully at rest they spread their wings out flat, making them resemble a small translucent moth. This one was slightly disturbed by my attentions so it had gone into a more alert posture. Although Derbids can jump and fly like other planthoppers, they are rather placid in nature so they are easy to photograph when handled with care. The prominent thingies on the head are its antennae:

The next one is what I call the Red Derbid (Apache degeeri). This is my favorite Derbid, and I found several of these that day. Its antennae are long and squiggly, making it look like it has some kind of weird face. There is a third species that I call the White Derbid. It is nearly the twin of the Red Derbid, but it’s mostly white. These are found under tree leaves that are farther to the south:

The woods were full of orb webs, and most of those belonged to an odd but quite common spider called the Spined Micrathena (Micrathena gracilis). These pea-sized spiders are pretty helpless when displaced outside of their web, but they are quite skillful when in their web and of course they swiftly build their large orb webs at night when they are basically blind:

Among these spiny weirdos I was amazed to find a striking color variant, as shown in the next picture. I had to take this one home for staged pictures! That is one spider that belongs on a heavy metal music album cover!:

The remaining pictures came from other area parks. As I am still feeling spidery after that last one, here is our largest spider, the Fishing Spider (Dolomedes scriptus). The linked picture gives you an idea of their size. Fishing Spiders hunt near and on water, and this one was found along a river bank. This lady had carried her egg sac to the top of a plant, and she is guarding her recently hatched spiderlings in a web nursery. You can see the mass of babies in the background. Fishing Spiders can be irritable at this time, but she was not at all aggressive so I had no trouble taking a wide-angle macro picture. Although the composition does not suggest it, the lens had to pretty much touch the spider since the working distance for wide-angle macro is extremely short:

I have some odds-and-ends remaining, but I will finish with an interesting one.

Next up is an Ailanthus Webworm Moth (Atteva aurea). These small moths have expanded their range northward since they have accepted the invasive Ailanthus or Tree of Heaven as a host plant. If one plays with the lighting, as I have done here, one can get a bit of iridescent blue out of the black markings on the wings:

Next up is a Scaly Bee Fly (Lepidophora lepidocera). Adult Bee Flies feed on nectar, and the larvae are either parasitic or predatory on other insects, depending on the species:

Here are some of our local wasps. First is our native Northern Paper Wasp, Polistes fuscatus, followed by an Eastern Yellowjacket, Vespula maculifrons. These are of course social wasps:

Next up is a White-banded Potter Wasp, Ancistrocerus albophaleratus. Potter wasps are solitary, and they build a mud-pot nest which they will provision with paralyzed arthropods like caterpillars or spiders, depending on the species:

The above wasps all belong to the family Vespidae, which can be immediately recognized because their front wings are folded lengthwise into a V in cross-section (V is for Vespidae).

The next insect looks like a lovely green-eyed bee, but I soon realized it lacked certain bee characters and so it had to be a wasp. It took a while, but I finally identified it as belonging to the family Crabronidae, and the genus Tachytes – that is all I know. These solitary wasps raise their young in burrows, provisioning them with paralyzed grasshoppers or katydids:

The last insect is rather comical and I don’t understand what it wants. This is a Pixie Robber Fly (Beameromyia sp.). Robber Flies are of course predatory. I occasionally see this species drawn to the porch light at night, as this one was, and for some reason they really want to stand on their head. I managed to coax this one onto a stick for pictures, and while I would tip and turn the stick to get it into frame, it would immediately adjust its stance so that it remained as you see it here. I have no idea why:

Readers’ wildlife photos

November 21, 2024 • 8:15 am

Regular contributor Mark Sturtevant has once again sent us a batch of lovely insect photos, including some arachnids and one mammal). Mark’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

The first part of this set are photographs from the gardens around my house, and then we move out to area parks. I live in eastern Michigan.

The lovely beetle shown in the first picture is a Lily Leaf Beetle (Lilioceris lilii). These become common on the lilies that the wife likes to grow, and they are a minor pest on them as they riddle the plants with holes. I had never seen the larvae, but while preparing this post I had learned that they hide under the leaves and I simply never looked there. The larvae are disgusting, as they cover themselves with their droppings as a deterrent. I should definitely photograph some next season!:

Next up is another example of Say’s Mantidfly (Dicromantispa sayi). In my last post I had shown a female, and this is a smaller male. This species of Mantidfly grows up by living and feeding inside the egg sacs of spiders, and there are always jumping spiders on our shed and that is where I find Mantidflies:

Back in the garden there is always drama of one kind or another. I was very elated one day to find a Cuckoo wasp foraging at the daisies, as shown in the next picture. I won’t be able to identify the species without careful inspection, but these beautiful wasps are usually challenging to photograph since they are normally very alert and active. I simply got lucky here. Cuckoo wasps are so-named because they are kleptoparasites in the nests of wasps or bees. Besides feeding on the provisions meant for the larvae of their hosts, they also eat the host eggs or larvae as well:

Predators commonly stay among the daisies in the garden, including the crab spiders shown in the next two pictures. I believe these are Misumenoides formosipes, based on the ridge that I could see just underneath the frontal eyes. The second picture shows one that has taken a Green Bottle Fly, Lucilia sericata:

Next are pictures taken from local parks. Here is one of our larger species of skipper butterfly, the Indigo Duskywing, Erynnis baptisiae. One can generally recognize skippers since they are usually moth-like butterflies, and they have distinctly hooked-shaped clubs on their antennae. In my younger years it was believed that skippers were a separate group from butterflies, but now they are found to be within the latter. And while we are at it, butterflies are now understood to be descended from moths, but let’s move on:

The remaining pictures were all taken on one day at a flower-filled and very productive meadow near where I work. There are more pictures from that park from this day, but those will have to wait for later.

First up is this extremely metallic Dogbane Beetle (Chrysochus auratus). These are vegetarian on a narrow range of host plants, including Dogbane, which makes the insects toxic:

The beetle shown in the next picture had me stumped for a while, but the distinctly “flabellate” antennae and an old field guide helped me to narrow it down. This is a kind of Wedge-shaped beetle, Macrosiagon limbata, and that surprised me since it does not resemble the one species that I know from this obscure family. This one is a male, identified by its antennae. Females will lay eggs on flowers, and the active larvae that hatch will clamber onto a passing bee to be taken back to the nest. There they will consume the larvae in the nest:

Many Bergamot flowers were in the field, and they were well tended by many of these clear-winged sphinx moths (Hemaris sp), and you can see tthat it is a bumble bee mimic:

The final insect-related pictures show why I spend much time carefully looking under leaves. I will likely never learn the species names of these insects, however. The white mass on the right is a bundle of cocoons from the Braconidae family of wasps, which are small wasps that are parasitoids inside the bodies of caterpillars. The term “parasitoid” is preferred here, rather than parasite, since the insects live inside the bodies of their hosts – parasite-like – but they quite deliberately and slowly kill their host, while parasites aren’t supposed to do that on purpose. The eviscerated caterpillar has fallen away, unfortunately, but while it was there it would be laying across the cocoons, still barely alive for a time, and actively “protecting” the cocoons in a strange example of how a hosts’ behavior is changed by parasitoid wasps. I have seen this many times, and you can see it as well in this very entertaining Ze Frank video that Jerry posted recently.

But that isn’t all. What are those black thingies to the left? Well, those are the pupae of a kind of hyperparasitic wasp – very small wasps that are parasitoids of the parasitoids. I had seen these mini-tombstones of pupae many times on plants, but this is the first time that I had enough context to understand the bigger picture about them. If you look carefully you will see an adult wasp among the pupae – a detail that I did not see at the time. Based on some findings in BugGuide, I suggest that this second group is from the Eulophidae family, as shown in the linked picture:

Next is a close-up of the Eulophid pupae. This required the Raynox 250 diopter lens to boost the power of the macro lens. The yellow stuff next to the pupae is called meconium, and they are the gut contents of the hyperparasitoid larvae. When a larva pupates, it will first purge its gut contents:

When I excitedly showed this amazing story to the wife, she was quite horrified.

After a pleasant and very productive afternoon spent in the flower-filled meadow, I noticed that I was being watched by a curious onlooker:

Readers’ wildlife photos

November 19, 2024 • 8:15 am

We have two batches left (including today’s), so please send in your wildlife photos.

Today’s photos of archnids come from Dean Graetz of Australia, whose IDs and notes are indented. You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Backyard Spiders

Here in Canberra, we grow Australian native desert flowers in our backyard for their colour and insect attraction.  As a consequence, we also attract an array of spiders interested in trapping any visiting insects.  We find all spiders naturally interesting.  They have a 200-million-year fossil record and are a very successful lifeform with about 36,000 species, of which about 2,900 are found in Australia.  We wish to share them with you, such as this specimen.  Undoubtedly a female, she is intriguingly patterned and laying out a very sparse web.

A much larger example of these Flower or Crab spiders with legs folded ready to seize any visiting insect.  Her back pattern is very similar to that of the spider in the first image.  The ragged covering of hairs or spines make is difficult to immediately separate the spider body from the flower.

Leaf-curling Spiders  (Phonognatha graeffei) select a suitable leaf from the ground and, using silk, curl it to form a protective cylinder, silked shut at the top and open at the bottom.  They then live in this protective cylinder with only their legs showing, feeling for the vibrations of a captured insect.  As much as we try, we have never seen this construction happening live.

A distinct species of Flower-type spider, away from our backyard, industriously repairing her web after trapping and ingesting the innards of a wasp-type insect.  Its desiccated remains will be eventually cut loose and discarded.

A demanding situation to interpret.  Barely visible at the bottom of the cluster is a bee abdomen.  Swarming all over it are very young spiders that are suspiciously similar to the presiding web-owning female.  We did not witness the bee capture or the arrival of the young spiders.  So, which event came first?  Intriguing!

Another puzzling situation.  An unusually large amount of silk was used to wrap the butterfly, whose abdomen shape suggests its contents have not yet been liquified and extracted.  The view is of the spider’s underside where a curious spherical body is visible.  A parasitic tick?

An unknown species resting at the centre of her unfinished web.  The visible haloes of dots surrounding her are the small sticky deposits she has symmetrically spaced to eventually hold the long cross-lengths of silk, the last task of web construction.  Fascinating and thought-provoking.

The next two photos are borrowed and are not of our backyard, though we do occasionally find this famous spider here.  It is a large female Redback spider, guarding her near-perfect spherical egg sacs.  This species (Latrodectus hasselti) is well known in Australian popular culture.  It is seriously venomous, agonisingly painful, but apparently not lethal since the development of an antivenom.  It is well-known because, in rural settings, people have had their buttocks bitten while using an outdoor toilet (aka Outhouse) and they have never forgotten the occasion.

As well as regarded as serious threats to people, Redbacks are widely recognised as tough and effective predators.  Their silk is outstandingly strong, here trapping a struggling lizard, and their silk plus venom has been photographed killing small snakes.  Being tough and very effective are characteristics Australians respect. Consequently, many sporting teams use the name Redback because of their uniform colour and to imply their toughness and effectiveness.

So it is no surprise that when an Australian boot company wants to promote its tough and effective work boots, it uses the brand name Redback.  These boots are really ‘bloody good’ boots.  I have two pairs.

Readers’ wildlife photos

October 7, 2024 • 8:15 am

Regular Mark Sturtevant has stepped up with another batch of arthropod photos today (it includesw one bird). Mark’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge them by clicking on the link. But please send in your photos, as we are nearly out.

Most of the subjects were photographed from area parks near where I live, which is in eastern Michigan. A couple were photographed in staged shots on the trusty dining room table.

First up is a green Assassin Bug, Zelus luridus. These are common, but this one was very moribund and had an abnormally distended abdomen. I can only assume it was either infected or parasitized.

Next are a couple beetles. I have lately become interested in Ladybird Beetles that are not the goddamn super common introduced Asian Ladybird, but other species that are harder to find. But here is a new species for me, the Fourteen-spotted Ladybird Beetle, Propylea quatuordecimpunctata (!):

Next up is a pair of Flower Longhorn Beetles, Typocerus velutinus:

I could not identify the wasp shown in the next picture, but the good folks at BugGuide surprised me by identifying it as a Sawfly, Tenthredo grandis. I did not know that these could be carnivorous, but here it is eating an insect:

A few spiders follow. Here is an unidentified Flower Crab Spider feeding on a Syrphid Fly. I don’t have the pictures that would help me to identify either the spider or the prey:

The next spider I know quite well. This is a Sixspotted Orbweaver, Araniella displicata, which is an interesting little spider that seems to always build a small orb web across the face of a curled leaf:

Another unidentified spider is shown next. This is a recently hatched Jumping Spider, and it was super tiny and very cute! I had to use the super macro lens at about 5x to get the picture:

Many Jumping Spiders live on our shed, and about once or twice a year I find one of their mortal enemies on the shed as well. This very weird insect is a Mantidfly, specifically Say’s Mantidfly, Dicromantispa sayi. Mantidflies are related to Lacewings and Antlions, and their larvae grow as parasites within the egg sacs of spiders. This particular species is known to go after the egg sacs of Jumping Spiders, hence they can turn up on the shed, but they will also make use of other spider hosts as well. Mantidflies are very odd-looking, and their convergent evolution on Praying Mantids is obvious:

And finally, here is a rare-for-me vertebrate. I was visiting a new park, and this impressive Sandhill Crane (Grus canadensis) was clearly expecting that I would feed it: