{"id":20656,"date":"2012-08-29T11:13:02","date_gmt":"2012-08-29T09:13:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?p=20656"},"modified":"2019-12-22T22:30:32","modified_gmt":"2019-12-22T09:30:32","slug":"jumping-lichen-spider","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/jumping-lichen-spider\/","title":{"rendered":"Jumping Lichen Spider?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past couple of weeks I have been seeing a curious-looking spider hanging horizontally and upside-down, paralleling a branch and suspended along a single line of silk. This posture was exclusively nocturnal and suggested the spider was hoping to attract insects that rest upon silken threads.<\/p>\n

With legs flexed , the overfall appearance (under torchlight) was like a piece of exfoliated lichen.<\/p>\n

This spider was new to me and accordingly I wanted to photograph it, but during diurnal conditions the animal was not so easily found. Grasping an appropriately sized twig, the animal assumed the perfect mimicry of a piece of lichen.<\/p>\n

Undeterred, I searched and ultimately located the animal and then went about photographing it. Using a high magnification macro lens meant the only variable for focussing was the distance between the subject and the focal point of the lens, so a rail became necessary.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There I was, camera set up, rail located to the correct focal distance and the spider … moving … as if it was not challenging enough … this spider was reluctant to be photographed!<\/p>\n

Saved by the arrival of my 11-year-old naturalist-cum-documentary-maker-extraordinaire son, I had an ally.<\/p>\n

“Left, right. up, down, in, out!” eventually I got a few shots away and ultimately the one above. I also got this shot (below)revealingthe size of the medial eyes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the past couple of weeks I have been seeing a curious-looking spider hanging horizontally and upside-down, paralleling a branch and suspended along a single line of silk. This posture was exclusively nocturnal and suggested the spider was hoping to attract insects that rest upon silken threads. With legs flexed , the overfall appearance (under […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":2192483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/SalticidaeX.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6984,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2192483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}