Daycare - _TNY_0832
Here's another shot from my late August trip to the Svartkällsskogens nature reserve which ended in an involontary swim (long story here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/52324967245/).
Finding a spider with slings on the back like this immediately tells us it is a wolf spider - and of course a female.
But getting the exact species is a little trickier. This is one of the species in the Pardosa lugubris group, P. saltans, P. alacris and of course P. lugubris. They, especially the females, are extremely similar so the ID here ends with Pardosa in the lugubris group.
If you zoom in on the spiderlings clinging to their mother's abdomen, you'll see that they have blue legs. This isn't an external colour, but actually the hemolymph, the spiderlings' blood showing through the insanely thin exoskeleton of their legs.
Unlike mammalian blood which uses hemoglobin, containing iron to transport oxygen, spiders have hemocyanin with copper, making it light blue instead.
Daycare - _TNY_0832
Here's another shot from my late August trip to the Svartkällsskogens nature reserve which ended in an involontary swim (long story here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/52324967245/).
Finding a spider with slings on the back like this immediately tells us it is a wolf spider - and of course a female.
But getting the exact species is a little trickier. This is one of the species in the Pardosa lugubris group, P. saltans, P. alacris and of course P. lugubris. They, especially the females, are extremely similar so the ID here ends with Pardosa in the lugubris group.
If you zoom in on the spiderlings clinging to their mother's abdomen, you'll see that they have blue legs. This isn't an external colour, but actually the hemolymph, the spiderlings' blood showing through the insanely thin exoskeleton of their legs.
Unlike mammalian blood which uses hemoglobin, containing iron to transport oxygen, spiders have hemocyanin with copper, making it light blue instead.