Crab Spider

Genus: Xysticus

Description:

Smaller than 1/2 inch, black with yellow and orange markings on body and legs.

Habitat:

Rural SW Pennsylvania

Species ID Suggestions

5 Comments

William_Dembowski 10 years ago

I agree with everything you said especially your advice about going just with the genus. That is something that I should start doing (with very few exceptions) with my micro-organisms. Better to go with less info than inaccurate info.

drP 10 years ago

Forgot to mention: you might try posting it to bugguide.net in hopes of getting a better ID.

drP 10 years ago

The abdomen doesn't look so crabby, but the front four legs are pretty crabby. Land crab spiders don't seem to get the publicity that the flower crab spiders do.
If it were me, I'd call it Xysticus sp. until an expert says otherwise. eol.org shows X. elegans in southwest PA, but I'd still go with just the genus.

William_Dembowski 10 years ago

Yikes, I wasn’t thinking in terms of crab spiders. For some reason it didn’t look very crabby until you mentioned it. In any event, X.elegans is very close but what do you think of X.speciesd?

http://bugguide.net/node/view/300662/bgp...