Tree Stump Spider

Description:

This Poltys illepidus is the same spider shown in my spotting on https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/20........

Habitat:

Spotted in the farm on Tropical Whiteweed (Ageratum conyzoides Linn.) known in the Philippines by various names in many dialects. In our local dialect, this plant is called Salunay. Plant information - http://stuartxchange.com/Bulak.html....

Notes:

When I took the photos for https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/20........ it was around 9:00 p.m. on April 1st. and the web was complete, with the spider sitting at the hub. Later, that evening, I read in https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstrea....... that this spider makes its web at dusk and disassembles it at dawn. It then hides all day. So I decided to visit the spider again on April 2nd., just before dusk, so that I could try to take pictures of the web building sequence. I sat down at 6:15 p.m., in a comfortable spot and waited... and waited. At 7:23 p.m. I thought I saw a movement and swithed on my headlamp (to give me sufficient light to focus my camera) and took the picture shown above. That was the only photo I got. This spider appears to be hyper sensitive and immediately froze when it saw my light. I stayed in position, hoping that the spider would recover and continue building its web, but by 9:00 p.m., the spider had not moved and I ended my observation. So, this attempt was a failure, but I often have several failures, before an eventual success. All I have to do now is to work out a method of taking pictures in the dark, without terrifying the poor spider. If I succeed, I will post a better spotting than this one, on Project Noah.