#arthrobeauty — Public Fediverse posts

#Arachtober 31: handsome little ice cream sandwich boi (male _Hentzia palmarum_ jumping spider) spotted back in August.

Damn, posting every day feels like way more work than it should. Anyway back to slightly less frequent arachnid posts tomorrow…

#ArthroBeauty #DailySpiderPic #JumpingSpiders #spiders #Araneae #Salticidae

It's still #Arachtober 24 somewhere: a tiny, curious zebra jumping spider (_Salticus scenicus_). It even gave me a little head tilt. WARNING: very high levels of cute

#ArthroBeauty #DailySpiderPic #JumpingSpiders #spiders #Araneae #Salticidae

#Arachtober 17, part 2. It was shy and immediately went back in when I got closer.

#ArthroBeauty #DailySpiderPic #spiders #Araneae #Salticidae

#Arachtober 17: find the jumping spider! (Answer in next post.)

#ArthroBeauty #spiders #JumpingSpiders #Araneae #Salticidae

#Arachtober 14: The gaps between the wooden snow fence and the metal posts are ideal homes for jumping spiders and sac spiders! I found several bold jumping spiders (_Phidippus audax_) this way. High Park, Toronto.

#ArthroBeauty #JumpingSpiders #spiders #Araneae #Salticidae

#Arachtober 11: a little thin-legged wolf spider (_Pardosa_) on a blade of grass in a marshy meadow. They can be practically as jumpy as jumping spiders and are very hard to get close enough to to photograph.

#ArthroBeauty #WolfSpiders #spiders #Araneae #Lycosidae

#Arachtober 10: happy #InternationalJumpingSpiderDay! Here is one of my favourite species, the peppered jumper _Pelegrina galathea_, seen recently. I find the females' patterns so mesmerizing. This one is brown but they can also be just black and white.

While I've found them in all manner of places, I've found that tansy flower heads are a good place to look for them. They like to make little silk retreats under the dense canopy of flowers.

#ArthroBeauty #JumpingSpiders #spiders #Araneae #Salticidae

#Arachtober 7: can't go wrong with a classic, the photogenic bold jumping spider (_Phidippus audax_). In my experience they are shy at first, but if you take a little extra time and are patient, they become curious and friendly.

#ArthroBeauty #JumpingSpiders #spiders #Araneae #Salticidae

#Arachtober 4: March mating mesostig madness!

These are an ubiquitous sort of soil-dwelling predatory mites, likely in the family Parasitidae (ironically, primarily predators) in the order Mesostigmata in the superorder Parasitiformes. They are only very distantly related to the whirligig mite I posted the other day, which is in superorder Acariformes. While the two superorders are traditionally grouped together under Acari, it is likely they don't share a common ancestor and should be treated separately. So I'm counting them as a different group!

#iNaturalist observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/275521159 :inaturalist:

Some pro-level photos and info about mesostigs: https://www.chaosofdelight.org/all-about-mites-mesostigmata

#ArthroBeauty #arachnids #mites #MiteSex #taxonomy #Acari #Parasitiformes #Mesostigmata #Parasitidae

Let's kick off #Arachtober with some fall colours! This beautiful coppery jumping spider—_Eris rufa_, maybe, or _Pelegrina_?—reminded me of autumn leaves. Tried to get an even closer pic of its iridescent scales.

#ArthroBeauty #DailySpiderPic #spiders #JumpingSpiders #Araneae #Salticidae

An _Attulus fasciger_ jumping spider I met yesterday. I like the green shine of their eyes and their soft-looking palps.

#ArthroBeauty #DailySpiderPic #spiders #JumpingSpiders #Araneae #Salticidae

Yesterday I went to the big No Frills to get peanut butter as it was on sale, but it was sold out. In the evening I was like, let's try the No Frills near me. As I was passing a concrete pillar just down the street, I saw a surprisingly large jumping spider, the same pale grey as the concrete, cautiously emerging from a crack!

I had found a _Platycryptus undatus_ before, but a male one (they have reddish faces), which I guess must be much smaller. This one was as big as a bold jumper!

A common name is "tan jumping spider", but they are not necessarily tan-coloured, as you can see.

P.S. The other store did have the peanut butter.

#ArthroBeauty #InverteFest #DailySpiderPic #JumpingSpiders #spiders #Araneae #Salticidae

#SpiderSunday: several of the spiders I met on that one warm day last week! A running crab spider (_Philodromus_), a bold jumping spider (_Phidippus audax_), some kind of crab spider in tribe Coriarachnini (_Bassaniana_?), and a good old zebra jumping spider (_Salticus scenicus_) with what looks like most of a mesh-web weaver (family Dictynidae).

#ArthroBeauty #DailySpiderPic #SpidersOfMastodon #spiders #JumpingSpiders #Araneae #Salticidae #Philodromidae #Thomisidae #Dictynidae

#Arachtober 12: In some interestingly fungus-covered grass in the swampy meadow by the creek just past the Oculus, I saw lots of _Pardosa_ thin-legged wolf spiders, but they were as jumpy as, well, jumping spiders and it was hard to photograph any. Here's a couple I did get!

These cute little spiders, getting up to ~1cm body length, put the lie to the common misconception that a "wolf spider" is necessarily big, hairy, and bulky. In fact the family Lycosidae has thousands of species all over the world, as varied as their habitats, from large desert burrow-dwellers to these lithe little denizens of marshy undergrowth and rocky shore.

#ArthroBeauty #DailySpiderPic #SpidersOfMastodon #WolfSpiders #spiders • #Araneae #Lycosidae

Suddenly realized what the secondhand DSLR would be perfect for at my current beginner stage: the lakeshore thin-legged wolf spiders (_Pardosa lapidicina_)!

Though it is rather late in the season, I saw plenty of females with egg sacs running around—perhaps it's been warm long enough for them to have two litters? And I found one mother carrying babies. I also include photos of two colour variants, blue-grey and yellow-brown.

The mature males I've seen are all very dark, almost black. The largest females seem to be solid colours. I wonder if they change colour based on life stage?

#DailySpiderPic #SpidersOfMastodon #spiders #InverteFest #ArthroBeauty • #Araneae #Lycosidae

A ballooning wolf spider from down by the lake the other day! I like how in the third picture you can see its little claws hanging on to the silk strung between a gap in the railing.

#ArthroBeauty #DailySpiderPic #SpidersOfMastodon #spiders #Araneae #Lycosidae #SpiderBehaviour

Went down to the lake for lichen pics, but found tons of running crab spiders (family Philodromidae) out and about!!

#ArthroBeauty #DailySpiderPic #SpidersOfMastodon #spiders #Araneae #Philodromidae #macro

#SpiderSunday: a running crab spider (family Philodromidae) guarding an egg sac nestled among pine needles. I mostly find small orbweavers like _Zygiella_ at the tips of the pine branches so this was a pleasant surprise.

#ArthroBeauty #DailySpiderPic #spiders #SpiderBehaviour #Araneae #Philodromidae

I don't know what possessed me to go to Trillium Park today of all days. Oh well. There are still plenty of _Pardosa_ wolf spiders to be found, but the place belongs to the grass spiders (_Agelenopsis_) now.

Many people mix up wolf and grass spiders; click through for comparison pictures and helpful alt text.

#ArthroBeauty #DailySpiderPic #spiders #Araneae #Agelenidae #Lycosidae #Araneidae #OntarioPlace #macro

On the Beltline Trail the other day, my sister and I spotted this delightfully and unusually pink running crab spider (family Philodromidae). A closer look showed it was feeding on a bright red whirligig mite (family Anystidae)—perhaps how it got that colour??

#ArthroBeauty #DailySpiderPic #SpiderSunday #spiders #DailyMitePic #Mitestodon #mites #Araneae #Philodromidae #Acari #Anystidae

Just under the wire for #SpiderSunday! I felt bad for this five-legged running crab spider (_Philodromus_ sp.) so I caught him a nice big midge which he quickly took from my hand.

#ArthroBeauty #DailySpiderPic #spiders #Philodromidae #macro

However, I was *really* there to catch some rays with the wolf spiders. This _Pardosa lapidicina_ had such a comfortable sploot going on that she didn't even mind me taking up-close photos. There's no sploot like the P. lap sploot.

#ArthroBeauty #DailySpiderPic #arachnids #spiders #Lycosidae #sploot #macro