Insects Lurking About

One of my favorite things to do when I have the time while hiking is to move slowly and see what insects and arachnids may be lurking about on a plant. There’s a good chance one is hiding in plain sight, like this American nursery web spider, Pisuarina mira.

Common boneset, Eupatorium perfoliatum, the perfect haunt for that spider as it waits for insects to come nectar!

This unassuming goldenrod looks devoid of faunal life but…

you would be wrong. I’m unsure which bee this is and I may not ever get an answer because I only have the one photo, but it may be one of the leaf cutter bees, possibly Coelioxys dolichos. I’ll update this post if anyone is able to identify it.

And unfortunately this little sweat bee has been snared in the web of a spider nearby. It looks like an unfortunate dragonfly also met its demise there as well.

The culprit may have been this female green lynx spider, which you can see here carefully taking care of her nest of eggs.

She had them tucked away deep inside the goldenrod and it took me a couple of angles to get a decent photo of them.

This is the first year I have seen so many green lynx females with eggs. I found three separate mom’s with their egg cases at home and even managed to see one of them with all of their hatchlings back in late November.

Move slowly, a whole other world is unfolding out of human view!

Angelina National Forest, October 2022.