Wednesday 15 January 2014

Unique species of crab spider



This is one of my favorite finds so far:



 Family: Thomisidae, Genus: Cymbacha.

Thomisidae are commonly known as crab spiders. They sit on flowers waiting for their prey and are famous for their bright colours under UV light (this is thought to help attract prey). Crab spiders normally look much more like this, but there is often a lot of variation within one Family of spiders (another factor which makes identifying them difficult!).

This little guy (well girl actually, I will write a post later to explain how I can tell the difference) was found in a highly urbanised park in Sydney’s inner west, just across from my apartment building! 

It's another example of how exciting urban biodiversity studies can be, you find species you’ve never seen before living right on your doorstep.

No comments:

Post a Comment