Goldenrod crab spider
Misumena vatia
— Where the name comes from
Vatia is Latin for “bow-legged, bent”: the two front pairs of legs are long, curved and held open like pincers, and the resemblance to a crab has given the name to the whole family of Thomisidae, the crab spiders. It also walks sideways and backwards like a crab, which completes the confusion.
— Facts
- Group
- Arachnids · Arachnida
- Order
- Spiders
- Habitat
- Meadow flowers, especially daisies and umbellifers
- Range
- Europe, northern Asia, North America
- Size
- Female 9–11 mm, male 3–4 mm
- Diet
- Bees, hoverflies, butterflies and other pollinators
- Lifespan
- 1–2 years
— Characteristics
- 01
The female shifts from white to yellow to match the flower, and back.
- 02
It spins no web: it waits motionless on the flower with its legs open.
- 03
It kills prey much larger than itself, bees included.
— What sets it apart
It changes colour to sit on the right flower, and takes days about it. On a white flower it stays white; moved onto a yellow daisy, it begins secreting a pigment and turns yellow in ten to twenty days — the return to white, which means excreting the pigment, is quicker. It has no web and no venom of consequence to humans, but its bite paralyses in seconds a bee heavier than itself. Field studies show that flowers occupied by this spider receive fewer pollinator visits: a single ambusher is enough to change a plant’s economy.
