Sunday, March 29, 2009

Wonderful Webmakers in the Garden







Here are a set of photos (above) shot on the same summer day (2008). A spider captured and bundled up a moth. The whole capture and carry procedure took a few minutes, and I considered myself fortunate to have gotten some good close-ups without a macro lense.


Later in the evening of the same day, I again lucked out in that I was able to capture this hardworking spider. This spider had great markings, but looked distinct from the ones above on the plants. I know little about spiders. Does anyone know if color and markings indicate another species of garden spider? How much phenotypic variation is there, and is it significant?