Sunday, May 31, 2009

CLOSE UP --The Grass Spider

This is one of my favorate species of spiders. She is related to the crab spiders. Useing a small plastic petree dish, I got some serious close ups on this Tibellus oblongus. They are hard to find since they blend in so well with grass and folage. That flying beetle shot was nice, but spiders still have the most of my interest. This one made it to my outside light last night.

Here you can see the eyes which are actually quite small for a hunting spider. Her main senses can be seen in those hairs on her limbs. They are highly sensitive to vibration.

On the underside we can see her clearning one of her limbs, and clearly we can also see her female reproductive organ, the small black mark on the abdomen, the epigynum.Another shot of her cleaning her limb. Spiders often do this and keep themselves quite clean.

The full underside as best as I could with the setup I had here. It took me couple of hours of shooting to get these shots.

Here she is about 0.5mm above the ruler here but this gives you some idea of her size, she could grow to have a body 10mm long.

Hanging out here, as you can see she's in the plastic dish and just about 0.5mm above the surface here. To take these shots in doors, I used a LED flashlight to see through the SLR viewfinder well.
I tried my best to get through any glare and get the best shots I could of this spider as she was in the dish. She's nearly fully grown but they get a bit larger.

Then I let her go right where I caught her, this is the typical way they sit in wait. They are a sly and very quick species.

2 comments:

Beka Jo said...

Do they sometimes have a darker stripe down the back and not a continual line on up into their Cepholorax? meaning only having a dark stripe down the abdomen and being tan like this and maybe span (legs included) an inch and a half to two inches? I thought the ones in my house were brown recluce but I cannot find one with a dark stripe down its back and a larger cepholorax than the abdomen I have tried to catch pictures but they are no very photo genic and for some reason I couldn't steady my hand long enough (I think I was scared lol) to snap photos even tried to video it and the cam wouldn't focus on the spider...anyway I have been looking online for two hours for a picture exactly like the spider I have in my house...I see them often lately...but weirdly no spiderwebs...thats why I was leaning more towards the brown recluce...since they hunt prey not trap them...any ideas? could you please email me directly? thanks I really would like to know what I am up against...thanks
Sincerely,
RabekaJo gmail

Unknown said...

Thats a wolf spider, not a grass spider. See, the spinnerets are short and it's rear has a line through it.