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The Thomisidae are a family of spiders, including about 170 genera and over 2,100 species. The common name crab spider is often linked to species in this family, but is also applied loosely to many other families of spiders. Many members of this family are also known as flower spiders or flower crab spiders.
Huntsman spiders, members of the family Sparassidae, catch their prey by hunting rather than in webs. They are also called giant crab spiders because of their size and appearance. Larger species sometimes are referred to as wood spiders, because of their preference for woody places. In southern Africa the genus Palystes are known as rain spiders or lizard-eating spiders. Commonly, they are confused with baboon spiders from the Mygalomorphae infraorder, which are not closely related.
Kleptoparasitism is a form of feeding in which one animal deliberately takes food from another. The strategy is evolutionarily stable when stealing is less costly than direct feeding, such as when food is scarce or when victims are abundant. Many kleptoparasites are arthropods, especially bees and wasps, but including some true flies, dung beetles, bugs, and spiders. Cuckoo bees are specialized kleptoparasites which lay their eggs either on the pollen masses made by other bees, or on the insect hosts of parasitoid wasps. They are an instance of Emery's rule, which states that insect social parasites tend to be closely related to their hosts. The behavior occurs, too, in vertebrates including birds such as skuas, which persistently chase other seabirds until they disgorge their food, and carnivorous mammals such as spotted hyenas and lions. Other species opportunistically indulge in kleptoparasitism.
The Ichneumonidae, also known as ichneumon wasps, ichneumonid wasps, ichneumonids, or Darwin wasps, are a family of parasitoid wasps of the insect order Hymenoptera. They are one of the most diverse groups within the Hymenoptera with roughly 25,000 species described as of 2016. However, this likely represents less than a quarter of their true richness as reliable estimates are lacking, along with much of the most basic knowledge about their ecology, distribution, and evolution. It is estimated that there are more species in this family than there are species of birds and mammals combined. Ichneumonid wasps, with very few exceptions, attack the immature stages of holometabolous insects and spiders, eventually killing their hosts. They play an important role as regulators of insect populations, both in natural and semi-natural systems, making them promising agents for biological control.
Wasps in the family Pompilidae are commonly called spider wasps, spider-hunting wasps, or pompilid wasps. The family is cosmopolitan, with some 5,000 species in six subfamilies. Nearly all species are solitary, and most capture and paralyze prey, though members of the subfamily Ceropalinae are kleptoparasites of other pompilids, or ectoparasitoids of living spiders.
Selenopidae, also called wall crab spiders, wall spiders and flatties, is a family of nocturnal, free-ranging, araneomorph spiders first described by Eugène Simon in 1897. It contains over 281 species in nine genera, of which Selenops is the most well-known. This family is just one of several families whose English name includes the phrase "crab spider". These spiders are often called "Flatties" due to their flattened dorsal profile. The Afrikaans name for these spiders is "Muurspinnekop," which translates directly to "wall spider." The name Selenopidae comes from the greek moon goddess, Selene, as their eyes resemble the moon.
Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga is a Costa Rican parasitoid wasp whose host is the spider Leucauge argyra. The wasp is unusual in modifying the spider's web building behavior to make a web made of very strong lines designed to support the wasp's cocoon without breaking in the rain.
Mud dauber is a name commonly applied to a number of wasps from either the family Sphecidae or Crabronidae which build their nests from mud; this excludes members of the family Vespidae, which are instead referred to as "potter wasps". Mud daubers are variable in appearance. Most are long, slender wasps about 1 inch (25 mm) in length. The name refers to the nests that are made by the female wasps, which consist of mud molded into place by the wasp's mandibles. Mud daubers are not normally aggressive, but can become belligerent when threatened. Stings are uncommon.
Sceliphron, also known as black mud daubers or black mud-dauber wasps, is a genus of Hymenoptera of the Sphecidae family of wasps. They are solitary mud daubers and build nests made of mud. Nests are frequently constructed in shaded niches, often just inside of windows or vent openings, and it may take a female only a day to construct a cell requiring dozens of trips carrying mud. Females will add new cells one by one to the nest after each cell is provisioned. They provision these nests with spiders, such as crab spiders, orb-weaver spiders and jumping spiders in particular, as food for the developing larvae. Each mud cell contains one egg and is provided with several prey items. Females of some species lay a modest average of 15 eggs over their whole lifespan. Various parasites attack these nests, including several species of cuckoo wasps, primarily by sneaking into the nest while the resident mud dauber is out foraging.
Misumena vatia is a species of crab spider with a holarctic distribution. In North America, it is called the goldenrod crab spider or flower (crab) spider, as it is commonly found hunting in goldenrod sprays and milkweed plants. They are called crab spiders because of their unique ability to walk sideways as well as forwards and backwards. Both males and females of this species progress through several molts before reaching their adult sizes, though females must molt more to reach their larger size. Females can grow up to 10 mm (0.39 in) while males are quite small, reaching 5 mm (0.20 in) at most. Misumena vatia are usually yellow or white or a pattern of these two colors. They may also present with pale green or pink instead of yellow, again, in a pattern with white. They have the ability to change between these colors based on their surroundings through the molting process. They have a complex visual system, with eight eyes, that they rely on for prey capture and for their color-changing abilities. Sometimes, if Misumena vatia consumes colored prey, the spider itself will take on that color.
Pimplinae are a worldwide subfamily of the parasitic wasp family Ichneumonidae.
A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. The wasps do not constitute a clade, a complete natural group with a single ancestor, as bees and ants are deeply nested within the wasps, having evolved from wasp ancestors. Wasps that are members of the clade Aculeata can sting their prey.
Polysphincta boops is a species belonging to the family Ichneumonidae subfamily Pimplinae.
Garcorops jadis is a possibly extinct species of Wall crab spider, family Selenopidae, and at present, it is one of four known species in the genus Garcorops. The species is solely known from copal found on the beach near Sambava, on the northeast coast of Madagascar.
Structures built by non-human animals, often called animal architecture, are common in many species. Examples of animal structures include termite mounds, ant hills, wasp and beehives, burrow complexes, beaver dams, elaborate nests of birds, and webs of spiders.
Dipogon bifasciatus is a spider wasp from the family Pompilidae.
Siamspinops is a genus of Asian wall spiders that was first described by P. Dankittipakul & J. A. Corronca in 2009. It was merged with the monotypic genus Pakawops in 2019.
Tromatobia is a genus of ichneumon wasps in the family Ichneumonidae. There are at least 4 described species in Tromatobia. Species in this genus are parasites of egg sacs of spiders from the families Araneidae, Clubionidae, Philodromidae and Theridiidae.
Zatypota percontatoria is a species of parasitoid wasps that is part of the order Hymenoptera and the family Ichneumonidae responsible for parasitizing arachnids, specifically those of the family Theridiidae.
Itoplectis is a genus of insect belonging to the family Ichneumonidae.
References
- ↑ Villanueva-Bonilla, German Antonio; Onody, Helena Carolina; Santos, Bernardo F.; Vasconcellos-Neto, João (2016). "First record of egg sac predation on a wall crab spider Selenopidae (Araneae) by the wasp Camera lunavenatrix sp. n. (Ichneumonidae, Cryptinae)". Journal of Hymenoptera Research. 49: 65–79. doi: 10.3897/JHR.49.7862 . Archived from the original on 2022-11-08. Retrieved 2022-11-08.
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