#Arachtober 2: at the foot of a tree, a red velvet mite (_Allothrombium_) feeds on a male midge (family Chironomidae).

Not happy with the photo lighting, but it was a cool observation.

#DailyMitePic #Mitestodon #arachnids #mites #Acari #Trombidiidae

#Arachtober 3: got a view of this opilionid's underside that let me see the chelate (clawed) ends of its chelicerae! Also note the way the prehensile end of its legs wraps around the plant stem (near some aphids, bonus).

#arachnids #harvestmen #Opiliones #Phalangiidae?

#Arachtober 4: didn't manage to get outside for a walk, but this yellow sac spider dropped by to feed on the midges on the screen window. You can kind of see the two little claws on each foot. I mayyyy be mildly obsessed with spider paws?

#DailySpiderPic #arachnids #spiders #Araneae #Cheiracanthiidae

#Arachtober 5: tiny orbweaver spiderling in goldenrod gone to seed.

#DailySpiderPic #spiders #orbweavers #Araneae #Araneidae

#Arachtober 6: on a Queen Anne's Lace umbel, a crab spider (_Mecaphesa_?) has caught what looks like an ant alate.

#DailySpiderPic #spiders #Araneae #Thomisidae

#Arachtober 7: a tiny, intriguingly patterned mesostigmatid mite, from the same bunch of logs where I found the orange mushrooms in my recent post.

#DailyMitePic #Mitestodon #arachnids #mites #Acari #Mesostigmata

#Arachtober 8: a hacklemesh weaver (_Amaurobius ferox_) emerges from its lair in a seriously grimy underpass.

This family of spiders is very closely related to the Agelenidae—there are many species that have moved from one to the other and vice versa over the years—but they are (generally?) cribellate, that is, they make a kind of fuzzy silk.

#DailySpiderPic #arachnids #spiders #Araneae #Amaurobiidae

#Arachtober 9: me posting anystids is the equivalent of the tired teacher wheeling in a TV on a cart at the beginning of class

#DailyMitePic #Mitestodon #arachnids #mites #Acari #Anystidae

#Arachtober 10: from back in June, a mesh-web weaver (family Dictynidae) back-combing a line of silk to turn it into a fuzz of nanofibres. Spiders like this have a special sieve-like silk-making organ called a cribellum. This in fact is the ancestral state of most spiders.

Cribellate silk doesn't use glue; rather, it melds with the waxy compounds on some insect exoskeletons. It doesn't stick very well to other surfaces. Later in spider evolution, spiders developed other types of silk that could catch different insects and support more ambitious aerial webs. However, for a minority of spiders, cribellate silk still works just fine.

More details in this 2017 paper: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2017.0363  

#DailySpiderVid #arachnids #spiders #Araneae #Dictynidae #SpiderSilk #SpiderBehaviour #OpenAccess

#Arachtober 11: #Mosstodon × #Mitestodon. Didn't expect to find much on the City Hall green roof, but got a surprise when I turned over a loose clump of moss!

#DailyMitePic #arachnids #mites #Acari #Anystidae #macro

#Arachtober 12: Mesh-web weavers (family Dictynidae) are so small they can easily make a web in a single leaf. This one has caught a long-legged fly (family Dolichopodidae).

#DailySpiderPic #spiders #Araneae #Dictynidae #Diptera #Dolichopodidae

#Arachtober 13 (it's still the 13th somewhere!): a fast-moving, red running crab spider (family Philodromidae) eating an equally fast-moving, red whirligig mite (family Anystidae)! From back in July, seen on the Park Dr Reservation Trail, southwest of the Evergreen Brick Works.

Possibly _Philodromus rufus_? I've only identified a _Philodromus_ to species like, once.

#DailySpiderPic #DailyMitePic #Mitestodon #arachnids #spiders #mites #Araneae #Philodromidae #Acari #Anystidae

#Arachtober 14: A wasp's progress. Over a few weeks in July, I saw a cobweb spider on a fire hydrant parasitized by a wasp larva, then the wasp's pupal cocoon, then at last the empty cocoon.

Some parasitoid* wasps alter the spider's behaviour to make them spin a web more suited to sheltering the pupating larva; not sure if this was the case here.

There are also hyperparasitoids that target parasitoids, so for all I know the wasp itself may have been parasitized and a different species emerged!

#DailySpiderPic #spiders #wasps #parasitism #Araneae #Theridiidae #Hymenoptera

____
* "Parasitoid" means a type of parasite that eventually kills its host rather than simply feeding on it. Your typical parasitoid is a solitary wasp that lays eggs on hosts which become larvae that devour the host, often from within.

#Arachtober 15: a beautiful candy-striped cobweb spider (_Enoplognatha_). Peppermint flavoured?  

#DailySpiderPic #arachnids #spiders #Araneae #Theridiidae