Insect Picture of the Day

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Platycryptus undatus! This is one of my favorite spiders. (I showed one of these last year.) In the picture last year, I mentoned that they have a very recognizable chevron pattern down their back. This female is somewhat small and her chevrons aren’t perfectly delineated, but you can sort of make them out nonetheless.

This spider has been living inside the screen of the stairwell of my house. I kept meaning to catch her and release her outside, because houses are like deserts to hunting bugs: there’s often no water, and little prey. When I cornered her to catch her, she looked right at me and said “Hey! I’m doing just fine here without your help, bozo!”

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You can sort of tell she’s saying that from this photo. See how wide her abdomen is? What you can’t really tell from this picture is that her abdomen is swollen upwards as well as side-to-side: this means that she is very pregnant, and that means that she is getting plenty of water and prey!

I left her in the window. As of this writing, that was a week ago, and she’s still up there. I kept an eye out for prey, and it turns out that in the morning light, any bugs that got into the house overnight move to the East- and  South-facing windows. The stairwell faces South, and sure enough, it’s a spider bed and breakfast!

That didn’t explain the water situation, though. She is clearly getting it from somewhere: unlike orb weavers, jumping spiders can’t get all their moisture from their prey, and have to augment their diet with fresh water. Then it hit me: that window is directly above one of the sprinkler heads on my lawn. Three times a week, I spray water on her screen for several minutes!

So there you have it. Cute, adaptable, and obviously smarter than me. That’s why I like Platycryptus undatus.

P.S. She’s about 7mm long. Big enough to qualify as a “big” spider if you’re afraid of them, but small enough to qualify as a “cute little spider” if you’re not.

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Lolcats have a ceiling cat and a basement cat (and loldogs have a walldog). It’s only fitting that InsectPOD should have a bug for some side of the room. I like the thought of combining the spiritual loftiness of ceiling cat with the sinister schemings of basement cat into a single entity, so I give you: ceiling spider.

Also, it was actually on the ceiling when I took the picture.

This spider has moved into my house following the cloud of gnats, beetles and midges that came in last week. He’s about 4mm long (2cm legspan). The short “fifth pair” of legs by his face are actually his pedipalps, which is how we know this little guy is a, well, a guy.

He really gets around; I saw him in the kitchen last night and 20 minutes later he had returned to his station by the living room light. He moves fast when he wants to. His hunting style is pretty straightforward: he goes and stands still in a well-lit area, and when a gnat lands within about a centimeter of his face, he lunges forward and grabs it. This means that although he can’t see very far, he hunts by eyesight. This ambushy behavior combined with the long legs and fair¹ eyesight lead me to believe that it is a cousin to the crab spider family.

Either way, he’s in my house, eating my bugs, and that makes him a Good Guy™.

Addendum:

Sharp-eyed reader tceisele notes: Hey, this might be a three-fer! It looks like there is a mite on the abdomen of the doomed gnat!

I started to write this reply in the comments, but it’s so full of Gratuitous Educational Content that I figured I’d merge it into the post proper. Also, I get to talk about poop, so you know it’s extra postworthy. My response:

Oooh, you may be right!

My first thought was that it was gnat poop: spider prey often “let go” when eaten. This dot is on the side of the abdomen, however, so unless this gnat had a colostomy beforehand….

Another possibility is that it could be a puncture wound. I’ve seen wounds like that ooze when jumping spiders miss their killing bite. Jumpers usually try to envenomate at the back of the neck, most insects are incapable of attacking something holding onto the back of their head, and the venom goes right into the spinal ganglia causing quick brain death at best and paralysis at worst. Sometimes they miss, and end up biting the abdomen. They’ll hold onto the bug as the venom works its eventual way through the innards; once it’s dead they’ll turn it around and bite it in a more convenient spot for feeding.

I see three problems with my second theory as well: first, that drop of ooze is way too big for the size of bite this spider can inflict; second, there is no matching drop on the other side of the bug (remember that chelicerata have opposable, scissoring jaws); and third, the bug is translucent green: extrails² would tend to be clear or green as well.

So… yeah! I think you’re probably right. The size and specularity of the dot is also consistent with the kinds of mites we get around here, so it is indeed entirely possible. Thanks!

¹ I say fair eyesight, but remember that we’re talking about spiders here. Many web-dwelling spiders are mostly blind and hunt by vibrations, while wolf and jumping spiders have the best vision of spiders–they can see clearly up to a meter away and can see movement from several meters out. This is a spider that can see and hunt by eyesight, but can’t run or jump, only pounce–so it can only see a centimeter or two away.

² entrails that have failed to stay en.

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Everybody give a warm welcome to Brian Lyles, who submitted this image of a spider. He also has this to say:

As I was rushing around tonight, getting ready for my trip to Mississippi, I
stopped in mid-rush because I saw something scurry off under my mother’s
desk. With a little coaxing, I got this little guy to show his face, and
got several pictures of him. Unfortunately, the light wasn’t the best and my
camera isn’t the best for such small objects, but I did get one decent
shot. I have no idea what kind of spider it is, I’m the “ooooh that’s cool
looking!” kind of person, not the “thats a so-and-so spider” kind of
person. But anyway, this guy (girl?) has a half inch long body and with
his/her legs (s)he’s almost an inch long. Hope you like the pic, and good
luck with the ID.

Now, I’ve got food to make, clothes to pack, and sleep to get, and a half
hour less, so I’m gonna go back to that.

It’s a great shot, Brian! Thanks for stopping the packing preparations to take a photo.

As for ID… any takers? The eyes look small so I’m thinking not a wolf or jumping spider. The general body shape is consistent with funnel-web weavers, but the coloration is different from any I’ve ever seen. Note that I have only seen two or three species of FWW, all of them indigenous to the Utah desert, and there are dozens if not hundreds of other species. So on a general theory I’d suspect Family Agelinidae or similar.

Thanks, and welcome, Brian!

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Steve Jackson sends in this beautiful picture of an iris playing host to a crab spider and two–no, make that just one now–leafhopper bugs. I’m not really sure what those bugs are, but one of them at least is Breakfast tastiius.

Great shot as usual,  Steve!

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It’s Spider Friday. Toby Schreier sends in this picture and story, which is officially the new best spider story of 2008.

I have discovered that I am not an arachnophobe.

After staying up way to late drinking wine and chatting online, it was time for a shower. Now at 3:00am and with a bit of wine in my system i was enjoying the sensation of how the hot water felt running over me. After standing there for a minute or two I was thinking to myself, “Wow, it’s really cool how the water trickling down in patterns almost feels like it’s trickling upwards.”

After another long moment something clicked. I opened my eyes and looked at my leg. there was a rather large spider frantically crawling up my left leg. I can only guess it was trying to find refuge from the sudden onslaught of water, and it found my leg to be better footing than the plastic of the walls.

Toby earned the right to claim he isn’t an arachnophobe. His reaction was to open the curtain and shake the spider off his leg onto the floor. After he got out, he went and got a camera and a lamp and this picture is the result.

Look at the hair along the spider’s leg. It’s still wet!

Awesome, Toby. Thanks!

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This is simultaneously one of the cutest and creepiest spider pictures I’ve received to date. It’s such an adorable little juvenile Phidippus audax, it’s so cuuuuute!

And it wants you bite you in the eyeball.

You see the dilemma here, right? Right? I mean, on the one hand, “Awww, it’s so cute!” But on the other hand, even if it doesn’t bite you in the eyeball, you go to see who’s at the door and BIG FREAKING SPIDER, that’s what’s at the door.

Gyahhhh.

Thanks, Andrew!

P.S. Get the door. It’s GYAHHHH.

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Jeremiah has gotten totally out of control with the whole “sending awesome pictures to InsectPOD” thing. This is a rather decent picture of a jumping spider. I include it here in part because the picture is good, but also because the story behind it is my favorite spider story so far this year.

I’ll Jeremiah tell it in his own words:

I was taking pictures of a spider… Said spider was awesome, and VERY reactive to me. (Unfortunately, most of its reaction shots were too out of focus to send on.) It fell off the roof where I was taking pictures of it, onto the ground, where I snapped that picture. I got up on it, the flash flashed, and suddenly it came at me.

Through the viewscreen I saw it lunge, super fast, moving for blood. The flash had scared it, angered it, something, and it decided to kill.

It went right for my camera lens.

Me, the brave soul I am, instead of throwing my camera wildly and damaging it in the process, as I would have done only a year ago, I set it down gently, and the spider jumped off. While setting it down, I had the presence of mind to take a picture, because it’s funny.

Okay, first of all? BEST STORY EVER.

Second of all, here’s the panic photo itself:

And third of all, here’s what happened: the jumping spider saw itself reflected in the lens. A jumping spider, very near by, quite a bit smaller than itself. The perfect snack-sized prey!

Jeremiah, thank you. I’m glad you’re getting out and gettin’ dangerous with the fauna of your neighborhood!

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Jim Phillips sends this picture, with this single sentence of explanation: My wife & I were touring houses for sale; when she ran the water in the master bath, this spider came out of the faucet!

I am so envious. I wish my house had hot and cold running spiders.

This is a crab spider. You can tell be the flat, almost disk-shaped cephalothorax (the head/torso half of the body), and especially by the shape of the first and second pair of legs. Those legs are noticeably longer than the third and fourth pair of legs, but even more pronounced is how beefy those front four legs are. Look at the first segment, where they attach to the body. Those are legs that are built for grabbin’.

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A few weeks ago, Aaron Wadley’s dog went missing. A day later, his cat vanished. The day after that, the neighbor called to ask if Aaron had seen her children—

Oh, come on, that would have been an awesome story and you know it!

This is a wolf spider. Not a tiny one like the one from last week, though; this one is at the other end of the size spectrum. With a body length of over 2.5cm, these are some of the largest spiders that aren’t tarantulas. Think of them as “heavyweight” spiders (tarantulas are “superheavyweight”). I don’t know the exact species, but a very similar-looking wolf spider we have out here is Lycosa rabida, which literally means “rabid wolf spider”.

Aaron has this to say about her:

We’ve got tons of these guys running around my neighborhood. The subdivision was built on farmland that had sat undeveloped for years, maybe that has something to do with the proliferation of these. Anyway, I’ve convinced my family that having them around is a good thing. Although one this size must be removed from the actual house, per my wife’s orders. This one’s body was approximately 1″ long. Their dark color makes them stand out quite visibly on the light-colored tile in the house.

This is a fantastic observation, because the same thing is happening out here. We have lots of L. rabida running around because my subdivision was farmland as recently as 2003.

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Sorry I couldn’t get this one any clearer. I happened to hike by a tree and noticed some odd motion in the air: a cloud of dust specks not moving, just hanging there. I leaned in closer, and one of them erupted in legs and began climbing her silk dragline.

This spider, one of maybe a dozen hanging from this tree, was 1mm long (so her entire span in this picture would be maybe 4mm). Itty itty bitty. As I photographed her, I noticed another strand of silk hanging down near her but couldn’t see the spider. And then I noticed an almost invisible speck of motion on the strand. Maybe 1mm fully outstretched at most. There was no way I was going to get a picture of her, so I didn’t even try.

I have started experimenting with CHDK. Nothing to report yet, but hopefully some interesting things are coming.