Dancersend

By Dancersend

Harvestman posing

I love the way Harvestmen position themselves on flower heads, seemingly to help photographers like me get nice photos. This is a female Mitopus morio on a Musk Thistle that is just opening. While on this subject, how should I refer to a female 'harvestman'?!! I guess I could use instead the term 'Harvest-spider', which I have seen, but this messes up the reasonably well-understood division from spiders. I suppose it would be best to use the scientific name for the group, Opiliones - better than adopting the American common name for the group, Daddy-longlegs! That would get me deeper into both nomenclature and gender issues!

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