Friday, September 16, 2005

I GOT CRABS!

Here she is, a proud well fed crab spider. (Thomisidae) It is difficult to identify
as crab spiders can change colors slowly to blend into there environment. This
is probably not the common "Flower spider" as I first thought. It could be a
juvenile, since I have not seen enough very young crab spiders to know for sure.
Some better then these. Recently I've been consolidating and organizeing my
huge database of nearly 15,000 pictures and convert one file at a time. I also
don't want to overload my readers with tons of pictures of the same subject--so
I'm cutting down on the number of pictures I show per species even if I have
more really nice shots some won't get on my website. E-mail me if you want to
see more crab spider pictures--I got a lot of them.


This looks very much like the Xysticus triguttatus, this conclusion comes from
male crab spiders of similar size a trademark black cephalothorax identifies them.
The males are black or dark brown--there are already some pictures of the ones
I've found on this site--look under "all pictures" --that's my gallery. Click on
the dates to see most of my pictures that are on line--A LOT more then I can
fit here on this "front page" at a time.

This is very possibly the Xysticus triguttatus--not the bright white gold to yellow larger
species we also have here in The Dalles. If this is X. triguttatus, it's common name is
listed as the "Three Banded Crab spider" In that case she's fully grown or very close to
it. I don't think it's the common to Portland Flower spider or Misumena vatia. They
also live here in The Dalles but are not as easy to find here.

It is difficult not to put up the other shots I got like this that are as cool,
but I want my readers to look at the whole site and showing the same
spider over and over again is probably boring no matter what the
differences are.

If you want to see more pictures of an individual subject you can e-mail
me and I will add them. Most of the spiders and insects here were
photographed from all angles and I probably have 2-20 pictures you
won't see on my website of the same species, or the same exact subject
I just don't post--often not at all because they are not as good-I simply
have to many of them.


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