cehwiedel: Opinion, Analysis, Humor, Satire, Mystery,
Fantasy & Facts
Fantasy & Facts
Green Lynx Spider
This handsome specimen of Peucetia viridans inhabits my front flower garden. I found it when I went to clip a geranium blossom to bring inside.
Lynx spiders like this one do not spin webs to catch food. Instead, they are nimble, agile and aggressive daylight hunters, using their silk as draglines or to anchor web sacs. The female guards the egg sac until the spiderlings are old enough to fend for themselves.
This largest of North American lynx spiders prefers shrubby or herbaceous plants, and can be found coast-to-coast in the southern United States. They eat moths and their larvae, honeybees, wasps and flies.
Other places to find out about the green lynx spider:
Garden Bits, which discusses differences between male & female lynx spiders
Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, which has a line drawing of a lynx spider
Mark Kostich has a fascinating photo of a green lynx spider on a Venus flytrap
And for kids:
North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences has a short description with neat photos of a lynx spider that caught a bumblebee
Yahooligans on animals, insects & such, has similar information, with a zoomable photo of a lynx spider on a plant stalk
