A little over a week ago, while staging the photo for the previous post, I espied something that can occasionally be found at the edges of ponds and streams that have plenty of reeds, seen to the left: the molted exoskeleton of a fishing spider. Spiders, and most insects, shed their ‘skins’ as they grow larger, splitting the chitin and squeezing out backwards, and then usually hiding for a while since their new exoskeleton is soft, leaving them much more vulnerable to predators. The translucent molt is left attached to whatever surface was handy, usually mistaken for a dead insect, but it’s instead a clue to be watching for the former owner nearby. When I sat down to take this image, I soon spotted the culprit hiding in the tall grasses. With a stick, I carefully flushed him out, whereupon he panicked and scampered for cover practically underneath me, but then froze and held perfectly still for some really tight closeups.

Really tight. The cephalothorax, which is the circular head and upper body where the legs attach, was about 10mm wide, making the entire spider with legs spread not quite able to stretch across my palm. I could have made the image even bigger, which would have shown that the faint smudge on the eye right of center is actually some imperfection or injury. This one is genus Dolomedes, but I haven’t pinned down an exact species yet. They are typically found on rocks, logs, and debris at the edge of the water, and may be seen with their forelegs or pedipalps (those miniature ‘legs’ seen here tucked under the mouth) actually resting on the water, sensing the ripples from potential prey. The hairs on their feet help them spread out their weight against the surface tension of water and permits them to run across the surface as if it were solid, even as large as my specimen here. But they can also dive under the surface effortlessly, both to seek food and to hide from danger, which is very cool in itself.

One might suppose that they would only be seen near water sources; one would be wrong. They also hunt very capably as the wolf spiders do, wandering through the grasses and brush, so they can easily be found far from ponds and streams, far enough to suspect that they might never have seen such in their lives. For instance, the river where I got the photo above is over a kilometer away, and the nearest water source that might feature regular life within is at least a few hundred meters. But when I looked in a bucket of rainwater aside the porch today, the ‘drowned’ spider within made me pause and take a closer look.


That silvery color is a bit of a giveaway. It’s caused by air adhering to the fine hairs along the body, and forms an attendant oxygen supply when the spider dives, since they breathe through spiracles along the sides of their abdomen. Nudging the stray bit of grass that the spider clung to confirmed that my subject wanted to be down there, and in fact could have easily escaped the bucket by simply climbing the grass. This one is considerably smaller than the former, only about 30mm in leg spread, and who can say how often it might have encountered any such body of water before? Yet it took to it instantly, and demonstrated that it was capable of switching between being submerged and skating along the surface as needed. This may not be just an opportunity for seafood on Fridays, but might also serve to get the spider out of the sun during the heat of midday.


A quick poke enticed my friend to demonstrate its surface abilities too, where a few legs maintained its position atop the water while a few others check out the bit of debris under its body, ensuring that nothing tasty was in there. It’s easy to see the distortion caused by the water bending under the spider’s weight, with two legs angled downwards more to break through the surface. Yes, there’s a foreleg missing and no, that wasn’t my fault (I told you, they’re my friends!) My model here was cooperative enough for me to transfer it into my macro aquarium and shoot some ‘underwater’ detail images.


If you’re interested in shooting underwater arthropods and haven’t created a macro aquarium yet, what are you waiting for? It makes things so much easier, from providing a nice clear glass surface to photograph through, to allowing plenty of lighting options, and keeping your subject in a limited environment to prevent them from getting too far away or being obscured by suspended sediment, and even letting you control the background appearance. Even with the short depth-of-field of macro work, whatever is behind the aquarium (or within it) will produce blotches and color in the background, so sometimes it helps to put something a little more natural-looking behind the tank – in this case, the front lawn instead of the white bucket in which I had first spotted the spider. Instead of direct flash from a strobe on the camera, this is natural light, coming from above and giving an overall more realistic setting. I actually tried to obtain some shots of my subject feeding, by making a quick trip down to a pond and collecting a variety of aquatic prey – water beetles, dragonfly nymphs, and tadpoles – but the spider decided to leave the aquarium before partaking of my largesse.

And so, one last shot, returning to my specimen from the beginning of the post.


This is, once again, the molted exoskeleton of the larger spider down at the river – my finger provides a little scale. The clublike pedipalps dominate the frame, strongly indicating that this one was a male, and the chelicerae (“fangs”) are visible above them. Just like snakes, even the caps over the eyes are shed, but this particular species splits the exoskeleton horizontally just above the leg joints, so the top of the cephalothorax is out of focus to the left. Since most arthropods molt only when they feel safe, I have yet to actually witness this in action, but rest assured I’ll provide a post when it happens. And I’ll give you fair warning, too.

Yet, it garnered the attention of a couple of biology students who were doing a project on the species, and they asked permission to use the images therein. I’m virtually always cool with that, since it wasn’t for profit, was a good cause, and proper attribution was given. I’ve just been notified that their project website is now online, so in return, I’ll send you over there. It’s a nice collection of information on the species, certainly more than I usually impart, and if most websites were as clean and well-organized as theirs, there would be far less strife in the world. I also want to note that this is a portion of the larger site devoted to student projects from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, known as MultipleOrganisms.net (that’s organisms, don’t get excited,) also worth the visit.

I have to add in a small note: When I remarked about the snail that might have attacked me with acid a few days ago, I had spent a fair amount of time doing internet research on snail species, eventually finding the name of someone who seemed to know quite a bit about snails. I set her name aside to contact as a side project, and now realized that she’s a biology professor at the same university, even linked on that MultipleOrganisms site. Small world, but now I’m obligated to follow this up. I’ll let you know what I find.

And good luck with the project, guys!

In the case of my most recent review (which is the previous post,) naturally the image had to involve bugs. My first attempts showed that a scale problem was evident, but I also missed a rare opportunity. While I was unprepared with the camera, an unidentified pollinator hovered over the book for a moment while it sat on the lawn, attracted by the bright yellow color. This would have been a fantastic convergence not just of an insect for the cover, but a demonstration of the simple instructions for finding food within a bug’s brain, based on certain colors – what a great illustration for the book! But it was gone before I could bring the camera to bear, and I waited (twice!) out in the yard for a long time to catch a repeat performance, in vain.

So I needed a more cooperative insect. But getting anything that would show up against the size of a hardcover book and still be recognizable, especially in the size constraints of the post formatting, required a big bug. I had in mind an Eyed Click Beetle, but they’re usually not found until much later in the season; nevertheless, I took a short excursion to the local riverside forest to see what I could find under bark and rotten logs. Pretty quickly, I found a collection of Patent-leather Beetles (Odontotaenius disjunctus,) which are typically 35mm long or so, probably the best I was going to do. Aside from their size, the most distinctive thing about them is the noise that they make when disturbed, by rubbing their wings against their abdomen. I managed to record this and amplify it a bit, so you get to listen to the sound while looking at this breathtaking portrait below of one of my photo subjects.


While on this quest, I also found the salamander at top, which I believe is in the appealingly-named Slimy Salamander complex (Plethodon glutinosus.) This would have to count as the cutest thing I found this trip, and believe me, I’m sparing you the photos of the Patent-leather grubs I found along with the adult beetles. My salamander model up there is about 25mm long, and much more cooperative than the beetles were, willing to hold reasonably still for a few shots with the softbox for lighting.

And I found a larger specimen of a local land snail, though determining the species has proven quite difficult – the best I can say is it appears to be from the family Polgyridae, though this is little more than a guess. In my efforts to capture my large friend here, I had to nudge the body near the foot to get it to relinquish its grip on the branch; immediately afterward, my finger started burning slightly but distinctly, as if I’d had contact with weak battery acid. It took two tries wiping it off before this ceased, and I’m quite sure this was not my imagination. So far, I have not determined that any species nearby is capable of exuding a strong irritant (some aquatic species actually use sulfuric acid as a defense, but they’re definitely a distant relation to my capture, being sea slugs and nudibranchs,) but I’m still looking. Naturally, this made my handling for this photo session a little more circumspect. I mean, when someone is asked, “How’d you get those scars?” who wants to confess that they got on the wrong side of a snail?

But we’re not out of the woods yet – in fact, my next subject was found very soon after arrival, just off of the path that a trio of fisherfolk had only moments before traipsed down without noticing. Northern Watersnakes (Nerodia sipedon sipedon) are curiously massive reptiles, typically about a meter long but very thick-bodied, with larger heads than most species found in the area. My friend here was remarkably docile, holding the exact same pose while I not only moved to several vantage points, but switched to the strobe for lighting as well.

They’re fairly common around streams and ponds in the area, usually seen basking to raise their body temperature since most rivers are fairly brisk this time of year. They’re nonvenomous and can’t hurt anyone, though they’re distinctly defensive for snakes, very quick to bite – this is in contrast to at least half the species in the area, including the Black Rat Snakes that can get over two meters in length, which usually just struggle and poop. Northern Watersnake’s teeth are quite small and the worst anyone will get is a series of blood spots.

Yet, people are notoriously bad about knowing or remembering anything about their local snakes, so most water snake species get killed in the belief that they are either Cottonmouth Water Moccasins (which are not found in central North Carolina) or Copperheads (which are, but are much rarer than water snakes and significantly different in appearance.) I have some basic advice: if you can’t tell the difference and can’t leave them the fuck alone, stop going into areas where wild animals live. Stay indoors, watch TV, whatever. The only situations where anyone is bitten by a venomous snake is where the snake was provoked – snakes can’t eat people and don’t know what hate is; they simply want to be left in peace. This takes far less effort and risk than trying to kill them.

My subject here finally reached the limit of its patience when I tried placing my sandaled foot alongside for a scale photo – it took a quick shot at my foot, pretty half-heartedly I must admit, then simply slid off purposefully but still not quickly and ducked into the water. Yes, this means the encounter with the snail provided more actual harm to me. Despite appearances in this image, I’ve looked closely at the originals and those reddish marks along the jaw are almost certainly natural coloring, and not blood from a recent meal (it’s rare that snakes even draw blood from their prey, since they swallow their meals whole.) Also, quite some time back I featured an image ostensibly of an Eastern Cottonmouth Water Moccasin, but that I’m now fairly certain was simply another example of my friend here. I’ve never seen a Cottonmouth in the wild, and in my defense that was the identification that the zoo provided on the enclosure, but the markings on the face are not consistent – I think they simply had both species in the enclosure and one not marked. Yeah, two and a half years for a correction – that’s still better than the catholic church…

Finally, Sunday morning The Girlfriend and I sat out on the porch and watched our resident Five-lined skink (genus Plestiodon) venturing out on the steps. That afternoon, The Girlfriend came in and remarked about how bold the skink was getting – she had perched on the brick edge at shelf height right alongside the door, and hadn’t budged when TG had passed. I fetched the camera and, sure enough, the skink stayed in place for several frames at a very close range, even allowing me to remove the thermometer transmitter that serves as the backdrop in this image. I have never seen a skink this complacent about close approaches, and have no idea why it occurred. I also suspect it’s a different one than we’d been seeing, since that previous (linked) shot had to be obtained with a focal length of 320mm, and she disappeared every time I made any distinct movement. But hey, I’ll take the opportunity to get those nice detailed closeups any time I’m offered.

Brain Bugs: How The Brain’s Flaws Shape Our Lives, by Dean Buonomano, tackles a subject that we really need to be more aware of. The overall message is, humans possess brains that adapted to the demands of our development as a species over millions of years, and like nearly all other species on the planet, there are mechanisms that help us to survive. Problems arise, however, because these mechanisms are not precise, and most especially cannot differentiate between appropriate and inappropriate times to take effect. There are also basic brain functions that have strengths and weaknesses, depending on what we’re asking them to do.

For instance, Buonomano points out that humans overall, when introduced to someone by name and vocation, will usually remember ‘baker’ as a vocation more accurately than ‘Baker’ as a name, simply because the vocation of baker has more connections to other things in our minds, such as fresh bread, flour, cookies, and so on – many of which may generate a positive response to us: “Mmmm, fresh bread!” While the name Baker is in a different class within our minds, even when being exactly the same word. That’s just the point – it’s not exactly the same word. Our brains are not a collection of discrete neurons, each representing a particular memory, but a network of connections among these neurons with varying strengths, which denotes their importance to us (and now I don’t feel quite as bad about being pathetic at remembering names.) The author touches on the chemical functions that make this work, and the structures that make up the brain itself, but only enough to explain how memory and thought processes take place, spending more time with what results these produce, and how this can affect our decisions.

Notable within is the large number of studies that Buonomano references, especially since this is a recently-published book and many of the works he cites are contemporary – if you have any interest in current science, you will almost certainly recognize at least some of the names or studies. As an amusing side note, I had read about the reactions to a priming study only a couple of days before reading about the same study in Buonomano’s book. The interesting aspect of all of this is that, regardless of the controls used in research, we’re still human after all, and not only might make mistakes during experiments (that still hasn’t been firmly established, lest I give anyone the wrong impression,) we can also respond to even the implication of such with something less than detached interest. It underscores one of the points made within the book: we aren’t terribly objective, but filter everything through our own personal outlook.

And, in too many cases, with some help from others. Since we’re a socially aware species, we take our cues from others very frequently, usually without realizing that it’s happening, and this can even lead to false convictions for felonies. While we like to believe that the ‘rational’ portions of our brains are in control, and our decisions are all considered and objective, in reality these functions are inextricably linked to the automatic responses we developed over thousands of generations. Studies have shown that patients respond more positively to being told that a procedure has a 95% survival rate, as opposed to being told it has a 5% mortality rate, even though these are technically the same exact thing. What we respond to are the words themselves to a large degree, coloring our impression of which is worse. Marketers and politicians, among others, are well aware of this, and exploit it to influence buyers/voters in a preferred direction; if nothing else, the cost of the book is repaid numerous times over by making the reader more aware of things like this.

Moreover, while finding out about brain functions that are less than optimal, the context of these within the evolutionary processes that spawned them makes marvelous sense, and Buonomano supports this with several cases of similar functions in other species. The ‘bugs’ aren’t necessarily flaws, but purposed towards other applications, and our egocentric perspective as higher beings has caused us to believe that we’re free from such effects. It’s a necessary shot of humility, in a way, while also being fascinating, and explaining a hell of a lot. As he points out, our development as a species took place over millions of years in largely the same type of environment, and only recently did we suddenly find ourselves in cities with abundant food and wide-scale communication; our brains are suffering from a degree of culture shock, and still trying to build campfires within our hotel rooms.

As an overview of cognitive function and how open to influence it is, this books does a great job, touching on numerous topics without getting too bogged down in details, yet Buonomano has delivered the essence while providing the sources of the details in an extensive appendix and bibliography. Since he covers a lot of territory, at times some of the points are presented quickly before moving on, and if you’re used to a single point per paragraph, you’ll need to pay closer attention. I also don’t want to give the impression that the book instills in the reader some kind of despair over trusting our thoughts; what it does is make the reader more aware of how we can be fooled, which can be sufficient to prevent it from happening – it’s at least a good start. While anyone already interested in critical thought would benefit from this book, it’s also a great way to begin the process itself. Though I admit that much of the material was not new to me, he still produces a lot of perspectives that are both insightful and useful tools in debate. On choosing political candidates:

What if upon voting for the president people were reminded of what is potentially at stake? A voter might be asked to consider which candidate they would rather have decide whether their eighteen-year-old child will be sent off to war, or who they would rather entrust to ensure the nation’s economy will be robust and solvent when they are living off Social Security. When the power of our elected officials is spelled out in personal terms presumably at least some voters would reconsider their allegiance to candidates who clearly lack the experience, skill, and intellect proportional to the task at hand.

I especially like the inclusion of the term “allegiance,” which implies (correctly, all too often) that voting is a function of loyalty rather than decision-making. It is in exactly this way that we can be influenced by how something is presented to us, and like Richard Wiseman, Buonomano slips in his own direct demonstrations, though not quite as many. While I wouldn’t recommend the book for readers below high-school level, it would serve as a great guideline for classroom activities for any age, and I can only encourage the inclusion of the overall premise in schools as a key part of the curriculum (admittedly, I say the same for critical thinking.)

Something that wasn’t very evident, that would have fit right in with the topic of the book, was how studies are usually structured to eliminate false positives and incorrect conclusions – basically, a rundown of how science is predicated around the idea that humans performing it are still fallible. Certain studies cited by Buonomano sounded far too imprecise to feel confident in the conclusions reached – see that link in the fourth paragraph – and while most were probably quite rigorous and structured, it was still an opportunity to examine how we try to correct for our cognitive foibles. That’s a minor (and personal) quibble in what is otherwise a surprisingly well-rounded tome, which fits nicely between the typical sound-bite ‘journalism’ and ponderous academic treatises. The style is not quite as casual as Big Bang, but neither is it hard to read. Definitely worth the time.

*         *         *         *

In chapter 8, Buonomano departs from relating neurological functions that we’re confident in our understanding of, and (admittedly) speculates on the concept of religion throughout our species – I’m saving this topic for a later post, because it brings up countless facets all its own.

I reached that website through another, Arizona Writer, who also provided another link. When I did the Amateur Naturalist series, I pointed out that, with insects (that’s part one, and to be more accurate/pedantic/anal, it should have been arthropoda,) it was actually possible to discover either a new species or a new behavior. The details in the above video tell that some of the behavior seen within had not before been seen; this post tells how an amateur naturalist discovered a previously unknown species of jumping spider. The phylum of arthropods is huge, hundreds of thousands of different species, and their habitats are sometimes very limited, so yes, keep your eyes open. Bugguide.net can help a lot to identify what you have found, but some of the participants have been far snottier than necessary, so be warned.

Meanwhile, I’ve been keeping an eye on the local Red-shouldered Hawks, but it’s gotten more difficult. The female has built the nest up a little more so she’s often obscured by twigs around the edge, and a few tiny branches right near the nest produced far too much foliage – most of my lines of sight are blocked, and the nest remains almost perpetually in shade. Yesterday evening, as the sun was low and the wind was blowing fiercely, I fired off a few dozen frames attempting to catch her when the leaves moved aside and the light broke through, but the light never reached her position – they knew what they were doing in choosing that location. The photo at left, while still a crop from a larger frame (the best I can achieve right now with the 170-500mm lens,) shows the conditions I’m attempting to thwart, while the image below is a full-resolution portion of the same frame; you can see the female’s head turned to the right, beak slightly open. It’s obvious I won’t see any nice views of her feeding the young when they’ve hatched unless I manage to get up a nearby tree, but if I have my timing right I might catch the early fledging behavior and first flights. I have no climbing gear (and not even a ladder right now) so the idea of just getting up a tree for a better vantage is easier said than done, and I might simply find that my views from there are no better than on the ground (having to deal with the foliage of the tree I’d be within, as well.) We’ll see what happens.