Crab spider lurking in a teasel seedhead

 Teasels Dipsacus fullonum are wild flowers that just keep giving. Bees love their flowers, goldfinches eat their seeds and the empty honeycomb seed heads survive for months, providing winter accommodation for tiny insects - but not without hazard.

This teasel seed head, at my local Low Barns nature reserve, had a predator lurking amongst its prickly seed chambers. It’s a tiny crab spider, waiting to intercept any small insect arrivals.

Crab spiders don’t spin silken webs, but often lurk in flowers with their front pair of legs held like crab claws, ready to grab unwary prey. Some species can change their colour to blend with their surroundings, making them very effective ambush predators. 

This one was tiny and they are notoriously difficult to identify, but I suspect it might be a female running crab spider, Philodromus dispar.

Two late winter/early spring invertebrates

This little crab spider was lurking amongst a bunch of ripening ivy berries. When I disturbed it, the spider quickly disappeared amongst the berries. I posted this picture on Twitter a couple of weeks ago and @ivysuckle kindly identified it for me, as a running crab spider in the genus Philodromus

 There's a shield bug nymph crawling over this lunar landscape of apothecia of the lichen Xanthoria parietina. On Twitter, it was kindly identified for me by @AlanM24217579 as a second instar nymph of the forest bug aka red-legged shieldbug Pentatoma rufipes, apparently the only shieldbug species that overwinters in the nymphal stage.

Crafty Crab Spiders

Some spiders spin webs, others chase down their prey, a few leap on victims - but crab spiders have an altogether more laid-back approach to hunting. They just sit on a flower with their front legs akimbo like a crab, keep perfectly still, wait for a visiting insect to land within reach - then grab it. Using the pollen and nectar supply of the flower as their lure, they are remarkably effective hunters. 

I think all of these, except the last one, are Xysticus species and all females - probably two different colour morphs of the same species, X. cristatus. Notice those forward-pointing bristles on the outspread legs which help to grip the struggling prey when those legs close around it.

The fly visiting this dandelion is living very dangerously.

The host flower here is viper's bugloss Echium vulgare, a plant that produces a lot of nectar and so is a magnet for potential prey.

All the above are scanned transparencies taken in our garden a decade ago, but the final one was taken in France 30 years ago and shows Misumena vatia, which can change colour to match its floral background. This female tones very nicely with the hemp agrimony inflorescence that she's sitting on - notice the perfect colour match of the pink patches on the flanks of her abdomen and the flower buds.