The Ant Mimicking Spider

Hello and welcome to another episode of What's that Bug?? Today we have a very special guest with us whose name is- *pop* *wakes up* GAH! I had the dream again...that one where I had my own nature television show. Ah well, some day. For now I better get to the blog post. *ahem* today's blog post was a special request by Icy Skies! Woo I hope you enjoy it! She didn't request any specific bug so it's basically a regular blog post with 100 times more love in it Right! Let's get started shall we?

Ant Mimicking Spider (Salticidae)

Right! Now! This...is a really cool spider. If you read my last blog entry on the crab spider you'll have found our about the unique colour changing ability that it has to adapt to different colour flowers when it camouflages itself. Well this spider has a completely different kind of camouflage which I'll get to now. This spider is part of the Jumping spider family, y'know those bloody fast and acrobatic spiders you sometimes find on the walls of your home? The ones that you see, then look away for a second to get the swatter and look back and it's gone? Those guys! Jumping spiders are sedentary (Ground dwelling, in other words not web living) and totally harmless. They are actually very useful to have in your house if one has taken a liking to your bedroom corner, but anyway, I'll spare the "Spiders are our friends" speech and get right on. Jumping spiders are actually a huge and diverse family of spiders. There are way more than the generic black jumping spider that we commonly see. The ant mimicking spider is one of them.

This guy gets his food from (you guessed it) Ants nests! Ant mimicking spiders primarily feed on ant larvae. Now you may be wondering how exactly these spiders mimic ants. How does an arachnid disguise itself as an insect? Well there are a few main tactics that it uses, not only in it's appearance but in its behaviours and even body chemistry as well! These guys are literally adapted to specifically mimic ants, and they are not the only arthropods to do it either. For starters the ant mimicking spider has a long slender body like that of an ant. Now spiders have two body segments where ants have three, so the head has a distinct elongated shape with a hump at the back to mimic the thorax of an ant as well. Next you'll notice and ant has three legs per side where a spider has four. Well the spider cleverly uses it's front pair of legs to mimic the antenna of an ant by raising them in the air occasionally and tenderly feeling the ground in front of them.

These guys are clever, they can convincingly mimic the behaviour of that of an ant. But fooling ants is not so easy. Ants, along with many other insects communicate by chemical secretions and emissions and rely heavily on the secretion of hydro-carbons to signal one another. You might be thinking "Ah I see where this is going, the spider mimics the chemical secretions of the ant" Well it actually is the exact opposite. Because spiders actually have their own chemical communication system . This is how wasps and other insects are able to detect spiders, because the chemical secretions of the spiders are different to the secretions of insects of their species. So this spider has adapted to have very few of these specific chemical secreting molecules in its body, so instead of mimicking a specific insect, it simply does not mimic the chemical signatures of anything. That way if an ant probes the spider if does not get any chemical feedback, and therefore it does not regard it as a threat. The same thing happens with a wasp.

Truly remarkable. These spiders are able to go undercover, sorta reminds me of a spy movie. But anyway, I think it's time I showed you a picture of what an ant mimicking spider looks like!



Truly remarkable! It look exactly like an ant! It even looks like-...oh hang on a minute that really is an ant...my mistake!



Here you are! This specimen I found is in fact a male, you can tell by the large "Jaws" as we'll call them.





Here you have a distinct view of the large eyes which are exclusive to that of the jumping spider family.

Well! There you have it! I hope you enjoyed today's bug entry! If you have any questions or requests! Leave em in the comments! As for me...Simon out!