arachnophanatic
The Daily Bug Bulletin
Photos from an amateur arthropod enthusiast. All subjects found in Southern Arizona, unless specified otherwise. Most IDs are unverified; corrections are welcome!
333 posts
Last active 3 hours ago
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
Last Seen Blogs
iforgottohitplay
Hope You Enjoyed The Show
blak-neko
貪欲な小黒猫
f2uzzie
My Spot...
bampayr
Paracosma
stardust-harajuku-blog
Mood: Ice Cream
Text
Cribellate orb weaver / genus Uloborus
(with unidentified snack)
10 notes
·
View notes
Text
When you have the light on your side but no macro lens :(
I THINK I can ID her as genus Habronattus based on the third leg. Looked like was up on this rail trying periodically to balloon away but there was no wind. Hope she got where she was going eventually.
(BTW welcome back SALTICID SATURDAY!)
#spiders#spider#jumping spiders#salticidae#my photos#the fact that she showed up at all on just the iPhone is a testament to how good the angle of light was#what a tragic waste lol
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
A new one! Male sac spider, Cheiracanthium sp.
8 notes
·
View notes
Text
We have an iNaturalist ID! Golden paper wasp / Polistes aurifer
A wasp friend who probably came in here to escape the hail last night.
(Thinking this is a paper wasp / genus Polistes)
26 notes
·
View notes
Text
I put some pollinator-attracting plants in my yard a couple weeks ago and LOOK who just built a web in the milkweed!!
A labyrinth orb weaver (Metepeira sp.)!!! The first of her kind to show up on my patio, but hopefully not the last!
#spiders#spider#orb weavers#orbweavers#labyrinth orb weavers#Araneidae#I really hope she wasn’t spooked enough by my hovering to move out :(#she’s still pretty small so I’m excited to watch her grow if she stays
17 notes
·
View notes
Text
I am still here but still having a hard time getting photo ops for anything that’s not a crane fly. No hate to crane flies lol maybe I should just try and figure out how to make them look more photogenic.
(I did have an unknown jumping spider on my leggings last week and I even had my camera lens with me, but I didn’t get him. I’m still furious about this)
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
Oh he’s a Habronattus!!! Perhaps H. pyrrithrix?
11 notes
·
View notes
Text
An adult female Habronattus sp. scoping out a barrel cactus!!
(More below cut)
I’m out of practice and couldn’t see the phone screen because of glare, so here are the failed photos I took of the other angles I usually try to get:
There was also a Habronattus male on my car but he was just too fast for me :(
#spiders#spider#jumping spiders#Salticidae#my photos#she’s big!! or maybe I just forgot the size of the adult females lol#habronattus are on the small side compared to Phidippus but I’ve seen so few adult jumpers this year#I lose perspective
17 notes
·
View notes
Text
A big huge post of BUG FACTS
PHOBIA SAFE (no real creatures shown in post itself) with clickable source links for every single fact!
Arthropods are wonderful amazing living things, but often poorly appreciated. This post dispels some common arthropod myths, but also collects some generally cool, fun or surprising facts!
MORE FACTS ADDED SINCE ORIGINAL POSTING!
Some people don’t like looking at arthropods, and I won’t pretend to get it, but they still deserve cool and (to the best of my ability) accurate facts, so there will be no real photos in this post. It’s also extremely long, so I’ve put a cut after the first few items! I apologize if any links change or go down, and will fix them when possible.
First: “Bugs” ARE animals. An animal can really be as simple as a jellyfish or a sea sponge, but Arthropods are on the more complex side of the animal kingdom with such familiar adaptations as legs, eyes, muscle tissue, neural cells, egg-laying and more. Possibly only rivaled by nematode worms, they may also represent the majority of animal life in terms of both species and actual biomass, making arthropods the foremost representatives of what constitutes an animal.
Wasps are at least as important as bees. Wasps can pollinate almost all the same flowers, even if it’s with slightly less efficiency, but many plants also attract wasps alone for pollination, and wasps pull additional duty regulating every food web that involves insects at all.
Mosquitoes are also necessary, sorry. The viral claim that “scientists” have “proven” them to be useless is a misunderstanding of one researcher’s opinion that it would be safe to eradicate one variety of mosquito from a limited area. All over the world, mosquitoes are a massive part of the nutrient cycle, and little else could multiply as rapidly in the same range of conditions if they were to go missing.
Ants and bees are effectively just specialized wasps themselves, together forming the order Hymenoptera along with the less famous “sawflies.” You can think of ants as super-social, super-successful subterranean wasps for having evolved from the same ancestors.
Fireflies are carnivorous beetles, which feed primarily on slugs and snails during their larval stages. In some species, adult female fireflies also prey on the males of other fireflies, imitating their light signals as a lure.
Male fruit flies deliberately get drunk if too many females reject them. Anything with a brain can get intoxicated from alcohol, and arthropod brains run on familiar reward systems.
Termites are cockroaches. Totally unrelated to ants despite their very similar lifestyles, termites were always considered closely related to roaches but were more recently proven to actually just be very oddball roaches themselves. There are even some highly social wood-eating cockroaches that bridge the evolutionary gap, still alive today.
OVER !!!!70!!!! MORE FACTS UNDER CUT!!!
Keep reading
8K notes
·
View notes
Text
Oh to clarify, this is an outdoor-access bathroom that I use at work and not my actual house lol, so that’s why the wasp gets to stay. If it decides it wants to nest here and causes wood damage then that will not be my problem.
A wasp friend who probably came in here to escape the hail last night.
(Thinking this is a paper wasp / genus Polistes)
#they’re really not aggressive#as you can probably tell from it just being like WHATEVER about me examining it lol#but the nests can sometimes be an issue#nowhere near the issue carpenter ants can be though
26 notes
·
View notes
Text
A wasp friend who probably came in here to escape the hail last night.
(Thinking this is a paper wasp / genus Polistes)
26 notes
·
View notes
Text
It looks like this little crab spider (fam. Thomisidae) has seen better days but I’m glad she made an appearance!
7 notes
·
View notes
Text
I actually found this Uloborus sp. too but couldn’t persuade it to break its “no I swear to you I am just a dead leaf” pose
#spiders#spider#orb weavers#hackled orb weavers#Uloboridae#my photos#I’m glad these guys have such distinct webs#(perfect little orb webs but horizontal)#because i don’t think id ever find them otherwise#I need to see the web before I’m like ‘okay where’s the tiny thing pretending to be debris’
8 notes
·
View notes
Text
I am having the hardest time finding spiders still but we got at least one Metepeira sp.
10 notes
·
View notes
Text
Western black widow / Latrodectus hesperus! Very young one; I’m actually not even sure if sex can be determined yet at this stage.
BONUS - here’s a reference photo for why I don’t take black widow photos in public:
#spiders#spider#black widows#western black widows#Theridiidae#I haven’t had much of a chance with the new camera yet but I’m not sure if I could have done this with that one lol#well unless I wanted to lie fully under it I guess#which I’m sure I’ll end up doing eventually#my photos
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
I know most of the people who follow me here probably also follow my main blog and have already seen this lady, but just in case!
A sweet fuzzy Phidippus californicus, California jumping spider, watching the world from a patch of Swiss chard. Private commission for @halffizzbin. I love these cute little teddy bears so much 💗
#I miss the spiders#it’s so weird to be sad about winter lol this has never happened to me before#spiders
551 notes
·
View notes
Text
Seed bug, genus Melanopleurus
14 notes
·
View notes