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.
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.
