- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
We've seen them ambushing prey, eating prey and looking for more prey.
They're members of the Thomisidae family of spiders. They can move sideways and backwards.
And they excel at camouflage.
Spiders consume 400-800 million tons of prey, mostly insects, each year, according to Professor Jason Bond, a noted spider authority and the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
In comparison, humans consume somewhere around 400 million tons of meat and fish each year, Bond says.
And although "nearly all 47,000-plus spider species have venom used to kill their insect prey, very few actually have venom that is harmful to humans," Bond points out.
How many crab spiders have you seen nailing a pest? Or just hanging out on flowers, such as zinnias? They're there.
Just waiting...
They excel at waiting, too.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout.
Down came the rain and washed the spider out.
Out came the sun and dried up all the rain
and the itsy bitsy spider climbed up the spout again.
--Nursery Rhyme
It was an itsy bitsy spider.
But it wasn't climbing up a water spout.
It was lurking, waiting for prey, on our Mexican sunflower.
This particular crab spider was quite visible--white on orange. Sometimes they're so camouflaged that you have to look twice to see them. We remember the perfectly camouflaged crab spider on a gold coin flower (Asteriscus maritimus). (See below).
Crab spiders belong to the family Thomisidae, which includes about 175 genera and more than 2100 species. Wikipedia tells us that "The common name crab spider is often applied to species in this family, but is also applied loosely to many other species of spiders. Among the Thomisidae, 'crab spider' refers most often to the familiar species of 'flower crab spiders,' though not all members of the family are limited to ambush hunting in flowers."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Like a crab, the crab spider can move sideways and backwards as it stalks and ambushes its prey. It grabs the unsuspecting insect with its powerful front legs, bites it, and paralyzes it.
Dinner is served.
However, this particular spider seemed to be perusing a menu. Hmm, a blow fly, a hover fly, a sweat bee or a honey bee? It watched honey bees glide onto the sedum and sip nectar. It was touch-and-go; the spider would crawl to a bee, touch it, and the bee would buzz off.
"It must not have been hungry--otherwise the bee would have been toast," Kimsey said.
We watched the spider for half an hour. The predator and the prey.
This time the prey won. Every single bee escaped. No toast today.