100 More species #85: Nursery web spider
Jul. 6th, 2013 07:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

Nursery web spider Pisaurina mira
Alexis came into the house to get me, "the biggest spider I've ever seen around here!" I would say that it's about tied for size with the Argiope yellow-and-black garden spiders and Carolina wolf spiders that are both known from our area (but not yet from our yard). I instantly thought of fishing spiders, but of course we aren't near enough to water for that to be right.

But then there was this structure--a few leaves folded and wrapped with silk into a nursery for a few dozen baby spiders. My brain recalled that there was something called a "nursery web spider," but I didn't have any other information in there. The pics of the spider's face were close enough that I could make out the eye arrangement--the most important feature for narrowing down an identification to family. Most spiders have eight eyes, this spider's eyes look like two eyes, two big nostrils, and a jack-o-lantern smileI looked through the very handy Spiders of the North Woods, and then the bugguide spider face chart, to finally come to see...the nursery web spider. Bugguide also points out that there are at least 6 distinctive color patterns of this species--the one depicted in Spiders of the North Woods looked nothing like my specimen. There's only one nursery web spider found in our area, and it's Pisaurina mira.

How YOU doin'?
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Date: 2013-07-07 12:01 am (UTC)All day today in London I've been taking tiny spiders off peoples' heads and faces.
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