Tiny Spider

[jsloan]

Here's an oddly-shaped spider I caught in a pitfall trap last year. It's an adult male, and only about 1.5mm long - tiny!

Ceraticelus bulbosus (Erigoninae) ... you can see where it gets it name.

 

[Widowman10]

wow! simply amazing the bizarre, tiny creatures we have!

good work :clap:

looks like those funny looking goldfish! hahaha

 

[jsloan]

wow! simply amazing the bizarre, tiny creatures we have!

Thanks! Yeah, they are strange looking, all right. Here's another male I found last year as well, Ceraticelus fissiceps, with a slightly different shape to the head region:

(from: http://bugguide.net/node/view/372130)

I'd like to study the life histories of these spiders (courtship, egg sacs, webs, etc), but they're so small I think that will take some doing! When I see a live one without magnification it's like watching an orange dot moving around. The trick will be getting them to live their lives where I can peek in with my microscope. Perhaps I can rig up some kind of miniature terrarium ... something about the size of a petri dish ought to be enough room for them.

 

[Widowman10]

I'd like to study the life histories of these spiders (courtship, egg sacs, webs, etc), but they're so small I think that will take some doing! When I see a live one without magnification it's like watching an orange dot moving around. The trick will be getting them to live their lives where I can peek in with my microscope. Perhaps I can rig up some kind of miniature terrarium ... something about the size of a petri dish ought to be enough room for them.

that would be the coolest thing! you'd probably be the first to do it...

 

[ZergFront]

Wow. Very strange. What would something like that eat? Mites? Springtails?
I thought zebra jumping spider babies were hard enough to feed.

 

[TheTyro]

I wonder why those dwarf spiders have such unusually shaped heads, I read Rod Crawfords journals after he goes collecting, and one spider he got looked a lot like these...except it had a spike like protrusion rather than a bump or blobs on the carapace. It'd be awesome if you took the time to do a study like that! It'd be very interesting. Such a tiny little (BIG!) universe they live in!

Great photos!

 

[jsloan]

Wow. Very strange. What would something like that eat? Mites? Springtails?

I'm not sure, but I think they might eat springtails. That's one of the things I have to find out.

I found a slightly larger spider last week (BL=2.5mm), a female Tenuiphantes zebra (Linyphiinae), that had built a web in a small hole/cave in the snow and she'd caught a few springtails in it (her web was attached to nothing but the snow - it was the neatest thing).



To give you an idea of the actual size/scale of the spider and its "snow cave," here's a picture from farther away that shows a bit of grass next to it. The opening of the cave is about 2 inches wide. The leg span of the spider is about 1/4 inch, and her flat sheet web was about 1" x 1" - its pretty much invisible against the snow in the background (the ambient temperature that day was about 5C (41F) - (also, to give you an idea of just how small the Ceraticelus males are, they're about the size of this one's abdomen, legs and all):

 

[jsloan]

I wonder why those dwarf spiders have such unusually shaped heads, I read Rod Crawfords journals after he goes collecting, and one spider he got looked a lot like these...except it had a spike like protrusion rather than a bump or blobs on the carapace.

I'm not sure exactly what causes the oddly shaped head, but many of the males in that family have them. In the Ceraticelus genus, some of the the males with the oddly-shaped heads (there are also some species where the males have "normal" heads) can be separated to species based on that feature.

Speaking of projections coming out of the front of the head, check this one out, an even tinier spider, an adult male Praestigia kulckzynskii (Erigoninae) I caught in a pitfall trap. Its total body length is only 1mm. These excellent photos were taken by Dr. Gerry Blagoev at the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario, University of Guelph, using a state-of-the-art microscope and camera (posted with permission):

(from: http://bugguide.net/node/view/365033)

I'd love to get some live photos of this species. I'm hoping to find some more of them this season.

This male "turned up" in one of my "throw-everything-in-and-ID-it-next-winter" vials; from a pitfall trap, collected between May 26 - June 2 of 2009. I almost missed seeing it in the vial and might easily have thrown it away without knowing it. As pitfall traps go, spiders caught tend to get tangled in pieces of loose silk, body parts from other arthropods, bits of dirt, bits of plant material, etc. I decided to pry into one of those bundles of debris and there was this spider! It pays to look at everything in the vial. That pile of gooey, organic junk at the bottom just might contain something worth keeping!

 

[ZergFront]

Wow, that snow spider is really cool. I wonder what mechanisms it has to defend itself from such cold weather. A jumping spider would be hibernating in that, not continue feeding.

 

[jsloan]

Wow, that snow spider is really cool. I wonder what mechanisms it has to defend itself from such cold weather.

They have some "anti-freeze" chemicals in their blood that lower their freezing point a few degrees so they can stay active in the cold. Strange, but true. You can find lots of info on this subject with google.

There is a new book on this subject that just came out, too:

Low Temperature Biology of Insects

 

[cacoseraph]

nice thread, as always it seems

this kinda reminds me of one of the things i used to do and am getting back into... the "micro safari". i would collect a handful of hopefully "good" leaf mulch or some sweet bark pieces or... whatever was clever. pop them into a good sealed (clear is a DEFINITE bonus, it seemed) container and then roll back to my house, apartment, or mad scientist laboratory and get ready for the fun. i saw some pretty crazy stuff just poking through it with my trusty 99c and $1 store magnifiers. and as it turns out, if you are careful and dexterous enough you can preeetty safely take digipics through said magnifying devices. my best pics show things that are well under 1mm in detail it is hard to get the knack and i waste many many pictures... but it can be done and i found it to be pretty fun. i should be posting some stuff in the future

@jsloan sorry to post such a big semi OT but i figure you are down for possibly seeing some tiny spider pictures from us amateurs and maybe someone didn't know how easy it is to get pictures of pretty tiny bugs. definitely not of this quality though, sadly. i am thinking about making a youtube or two of my ghetto methods, actually