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Comments & ID Thoughts
IDed by local Butterfly house. Believed to be: Xysticus locuples. Displays behavior characteristic of ground crab spiders, with a dandelion head for size reference. Legs appear mostly free of hair.
- Submitted by:
- Submitted: May 8, 2021
- Photographed: Jun 12, 2020
- Spider: Unidentified
- Location: Helena, Montana, United States
- Spotted Outdoors: Man-made structure (building wall, fences, etc.)
- Found in web?: No
- Attributes:
It was a good idea to ask a butterfly house. We have plenty of photos of crab spiders eating butterflies. I’m as sure as I can be from a photo that they gave you the correct ID. It’s a really interesting-looking spider .https://bugguide.net/node/view/480636/data The link is to BugGuide.net for the data they’ve collected on this species from photo submissions. There is a similar Xyzticus species, but this on is very Montana-centric.
I’m curious about why we get relatively very few photo submissions from Montana. Any thoughts on that?
Oh awesome a comment haha. 🙂 I’d definitely be interested in seeing that picture. xD I went to a local wildlife center first who referred me to the butterfly house. That’s wonderful. 😀 I’m glad. Wish I took more pictures haha. But alas. It is! This one’s so vibrant. Huh.. I wonder if the pictures they have listed for October are mine? It’s not letting me register is it possible you can link a screenshot lol. Really? locuples is most common in Montana? So neat! Well it’s because nobody even lives here in the first place! xD I kid but..… Read more »
“Nobody lives in Montana.” was my first guess! I live in New Hampshire, we have a low population density and one of the oldest median ages of residents in the country. This is the first time I haven’t been able to give someone a link to range data on BugGuide. I’ve used my own account to link the data. They’ve had a problem with bots scrubbing data, which slows down their site. That’s why the require an account to access some data. I’ll add another link to the rest of the site. October? Your photo would be in June, which… Read more »
Loool. I mean idk how comfortable I am saying “nobody lives here” xDD 1 million people is kind of a population but then seeing as we’re the 4th biggest state by area and you’re the 46th and we roughly have the same amount of people I’m more comfortable saying such haha. Oh I can see the map just fine! It’s the pictures listed for Montana specifically I can’t. Oh I see. Their human captcha is a new one I haven’t seen it’s pretty neat idea. I checked and I accidently uploaded this very picture we’re commenting on before. In October.… Read more »
Yes, your spider in listed in October for your town. The butterfly house took nice magnified detailed photos of it. BugGuide provided the identification based on the photos. They added that it is female. It is easy and free to make an account. Once you have it, type the genus into the search bar, click any photo, go to data, click Montana….. there are a few photos of it. I’ll try to link one to the comments.
https://bugguide.net/node/view/717271 This is your spider. I won’t take the photos individually off their site, they have copyright protection.
Idk I tried registering twice with no confirmation email. Haha. That’s so cool! However that is not the same individual lol. I hadn’t captured mine and no one else had access to the critter, then it had vanished the next day. Maybe underground. Also that picture was taken 8 years prior to mine. Maybe she was a distant relative of mine. xD Neat!!
Do you think my picture will be confirmed by staff and added to the
locales*Locuples list(if appropriate) soon?