{"id":36137,"date":"2024-01-17T06:00:15","date_gmt":"2024-01-17T11:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=36137"},"modified":"2024-01-15T01:21:15","modified_gmt":"2024-01-15T06:21:15","slug":"just-once-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2024\/01\/just-once-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Just once, part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"antlike
There are probably going to be a lot<\/em> of arthropod images showing up in this topic, because there is a much wider variety of species than anything else, and I was going to say “in this area” but I think that holds true around the world. I’ll mix it up as much as I can but, you know, nature of the beast…<\/p>\n

And this one I’ve definitely only photographed once, because I think they’re damn cool and would certainly remember finding one again, but this is not an ant – instead, it is an antlike jumping spider, likely species Peckhamia americana<\/em>, but even BugGuide.net<\/a> has so little information on them that it’s not clear that anyone<\/em> is sure. Some jumping spiders have developed the appearance of ants, and I’m not exactly sure if this is as a defensive measure or offensive;<\/strong> in other words, if it is to avoid predators or to assist them in their own predatory efforts.<\/p>\n

\"antlike
While the eyes are a dead giveaway, it’s pretty hard to get this close a look at them in any normal circumstances, so the key feature that you’re looking for is two body segments instead of three:<\/strong> all spiders have a fused head and thorax (cephalothorax,) while ants have very distinct separations between them. Behavior-wise they’re a bit different too, which if I recall correctly is how I identified this one. Ants tend to move at a distinct quick pace and pause infrequently before resuming the same pace, while jumping spiders move slower and with a lot more investigating. Jumping spiders obtain more information from their eyes, while ants primarily use their antennae, and this is noticeable if you watch.<\/p>\n

\"portrait
The magnification that was needed for these was quite high, as you’ll see in a moment, and I cheated quite a bit by capturing this specimen and photographing it on a detached flower stem held in a clamp, so I could turn the ‘stage’ as needed and try to keep up with the spider. The clamp was itself nestled in a small bowl of water to prevent the spider from simply making its escape. Nonetheless, even with such control I had an awful lot of images that didn’t pass muster, and more than a few that I only kept because they illustrated certain details. Like the one below.<\/p>\n

\"antlike
This is full frame and it’s not terribly sharp, but this was before I had my handy-dandy little paper scales<\/a> to insert into images, and so this is perched on my knuckle instead. If you were imagining something the size of one of those large black ants, you were way<\/em> off – I’m fairly certain my friend here is less than half the length of those species and doesn’t top 5mm overall.<\/p>\n

These came from 2012, when I was deeply into arthropod photography, largely because they were easy to pursue in the yard and what I was seeing the bulk of, and the images in my Arthropods folders still outclass the counts of any others, though Birds are catching up. Mammals still remains shamefully low – we’ll have to see if these can be boosted a bit…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are probably going to be a lot of arthropod images showing up in this topic, because there is a much wider variety of species than anything else, and I was going to say “in this area” but I think that holds true around the world. I’ll mix it up as much as I can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[1320,1319],"class_list":["post-36137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","tag-antlike-jumping-spider","tag-peckhamia-americana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}