Category: Venom

Big Meal For Little Spider

This afternoon I discovered a little White-banded Crab Spider (Misumenoides formosipes) enjoying a late lunch consisting of very large meal, a Tachinid Fly (Tachinidae). The White-banded Crab Spider uses its two front pairs of legs to capture its prey and then bite it, injecting venom to disable its meal. Its strong legs and use of venom allows it to capture insects that, like this Tachinid Fly, are much larger than the spider.

A spider that doesn’t build a web, but a spider that will find a spot among flowers to sit and wait for its meal to arrive. Sit and ambush.

This action took place in a garden filled with Apple Mint (Mentha suaveolens) which I enjoy because of the variety of interesting pollinators that it draws.

Yellow Garden Spider

Eye catching in its size and coloring, eye catching in its web design. Yellow Garden Spider (Argiope aurantia). A pretty large spider. The body of the female, the larger of the sexes, is about an inch in length, up to three times the size of males. Add those long legs and that is indeed a sizable spider.

Not a worry for us humans though. They are quite docile. Just be gentle and respectful. But they do have venom that they use to paralyze their prey which get caught in their webs. Yellow Garden Spiders dine on aphids, bees, wasps, grasshoppers, flies, moths.

There is no sure answer as to why they have that distinctive zigzag on their webs, but some scientists believe that it is to allow birds to see the web and avoid flying through it.

Seen across North America and Central America.

Cute Spider

Jumping Spiders (Phidippus) are to me nothing but charm. All of 1/8 to 3/4 inch long. They are not a threat to humans, but if they feel trapped or threatened they will bite. And they are venomous but that venom is not dangerous to people.

They are carnivorous, eating for the most part small insects and spiders. But there are a few that will also eat nectar and one Central American species that will eat mostly plants. AND the Regal Jumping Spider (Phidippus regius) can kill and eat small frogs and lizards along with the usual insects and spiders.

There are more than 6,000 species of Jumping Spiders, the largest taxonomic family of spiders. This one (above) is the Daring Jumping Spider (Phidippus audax). One frequent characteristic of this species is the iridescent green hue of the chelicerae (mouthparts).

And just to illustrate that I am not the only one that thinks these spiders are CUTE, here is a “teddy bear” of a spider made by Steiff. This one sits next to me on my sofa every day.