It's Arachtober and that means celebrating arachnids for the entire month of October.

Well, we ought to celebrate them year around, but October is THEIR month.

Let's especially applaud crab spiders when they prey on such agricultural pests as the lygus bug, also known as the "western tarnished plant bug." It's a member of the genus Lygus in the family Miridae and feeds on plants by piercing the plant tissues.

The lygus bug is easily distinguished by the triangular mark on its back.

The western tarnished plant bug (Lygus hesperus) is known as a very serious pest of cotton, strawberries and seed crops such as alfalfa, entomologists tell us.  In California alone, the bug causes $30 million in damage to cotton plants each year, "and at least $40 million in losses to the state's strawberry industry," according to Wikipedia. 

"Lygus bugs are one of the causes of irregularly shaped, cat-faced strawberries; another cause may be poor pollination, which results in small undeveloped seeds," says UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program (UC IPM) in its Pest Management Guidelines. "Lygus bugs damage fruit by puncturing individual seeds; this, in turn, stops development of the berry in the area surrounding the feeding site. Straw-colored seeds that are large and hollow are a good indication of lygus bug damage. Lygus bug damage is more of a problem in strawberry-growing areas where continuous fruit production occurs.

"Adults are about 0.25 inch (6 mm) long, oval, and rather flattened," UC IPM points out. "They are greenish or brownish and have reddish-brown markings on their wings."

So what happens when a crab spider nails a lygus bug?

The cheering section is loud.