Tiny Tuesday - Tiny Crab Spider

I'm pretty sure this is the same spider I saw yesterday evening when I went to look for dragonflies. It was sitting on the same type of flower and in practically the same place. I borrowed TheAphid's camera this morning with the macro lens attachment, as my camera didn't get anything half decent yesterday.


According to the Arkive website This species does not spin a web to catch its prey. Instead it lies in wait on flowers and vegetation for a suitable prey species to visit and swiftly ambushes the insect. It then injects venom into the prey with the slender fangs. This spider has the remarkable ability to alter its colour to match its background, usually a white or yellow flower, allowing it to become beautifully camouflaged. The sexes are different in appearance; females vary in colour from white to pale green or yellow, depending on the background. They tend to have two pairs of bright red spots on the abdomen, but these may be fused to form red lines or even entirely missing. Males are much smaller in size than females and have more slender greenish white abdomens that feature brown stripes.

I also saw some minstrel bugs on the same flowers but different plants. I was going to blip one of those but this is sharper.

Thanks to Beckett for hosting this week.