The Green Lynx Spider

My first encounter with a green lynx spider was last November while visiting my in-laws in the DFW area in Texas. I spent a couple hours walking around Bob Jones Nature Center (which by the way, I definitely recommend visiting if you are ever in the area) looking for bugs to photograph, but I hadn't had much luck. On my way out, I stopped at a bush by the visitor center in a last attempt to find something interesting. I caught a flash of movement which turned out to be a beautiful katydid. After capturing a few shots of the katydid, I realized that my hand was mere inches from a rather large momma spider guarding her egg sac. I personally find spiders much more interesting than katydids so I left the katydid to photograph the spider. Momma spider didn't seem to mind me taking some pictures, but I couldn't resist using a piece of grass to disturb her to get her in a defensive posture. I later learned that green lynx spiders can squirt venom from their fangs towards any would-be attackers while defending an egg sac, so I'm glad I didn't get quite close enough for that to happen to me!

Cool and collected on the left, aggravated on the right!

If we jump ahead a few months, you'll find me and my family now living in the DFW area while I attend grad school. The day after we got here, I headed out to Bob Jones to have a look around. Momma spider and her egg sac were gone, but the bushes were now covered in green lynx spiders! Green lynx spiders don't live in Utah where I'm originally from, so I was elated that there were so many of these spiders nearly everywhere I looked!

I like to define green lynx spiders as daring yet shy. These spiders will sit in plain view on leaves and flowers, but as soon as you get too close they jump/run away to safety. I suppose that sitting right on top of the flowers and leaves puts them in a good position to hunt and that with their good vision it isn't too hard for them to spot any potential predators that come by.

One of the many green lynx spiders I saw was busy eating a beetle that was roughly the same size as the spider itself. It's not uncommon for a spider to take down relatively large prey, but I was impressed that the lynx spider did it without a web. Lynx spiders, like the wolf and jumping spiders, don't construct webs to capture prey.

The green lynx spiders pictured here are in the family Oxyopidae, genus Peucetia, and the species is probably P. viridans, although I didn't save a specimen for a positive identification.

Check out the Bug Eric blog and Wikipedia for more information about green lynx spiders!