Nice pictures, Lucien. The top male and middle female are the same species of Phidippus, though it is not the P. johnsoni that is common everywhere in California that I have lived. The bottom one is Metapiera sp. Keep an eye on that nest. Before too long, the top will break open and babies come out. The tube will continue to grow at the bottom as mom lays more eggs.
Today I saw four spiders in all together within a couple cubic feet of each other, and to my eye, they all seemed to be different species, although maybe they were males and females of two different species. Two of them were jumping spiders, with similar colorings but different designs, and the other two were hiding-in-dead-leaf spiders, also rather different in appearance, one much bigger than the other. I couldn't get any good pictures of the hiding-in-leaf spiders, but the last picture here shows the leaf the bigger one was hiding in.
"Spiders"
3 Comments -
For a little while there I thought that I had accidentally mixed up which bookmarks went to whose blogs. =)
3/13/2005 12:58:00 PM
Nice pictures, Lucien. The top male and middle female are the same species of Phidippus, though it is not the P. johnsoni that is common everywhere in California that I have lived. The bottom one is Metapiera sp. Keep an eye on that nest. Before too long, the top will break open and babies come out. The tube will continue to grow at the bottom as mom lays more eggs.
3/18/2005 03:55:00 PM
I have long been a fan of hiding-in-a-dead-leaf spiders. Thank you for highlighting them on your blog.
3/22/2005 04:39:00 PM