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Nursery Web Spidersstrange spider in Sabino Canyon near Tucson
Hello Bugman!
I found this strange spider in the Sabino Canyon near Tucson. It was June, nearly 110°, and the water ponds in the canyon bottom were decreasing at a high pace. Around one of the ponds some of these spiders were sitting and some had amphibia larvae in their fangs. Strange, they rather looked like giant crab spiders; the one on the photo also moved like a crab. Do you have any idea what that might be? Thanks a lot!
Greetings from Daniel Jestrzemski (who really enjoyed his time in the US Southwest)
Hi Daniel,
This looked like one of the Dolomedes Fishing spiders, but leaner. The behavior you describe, including eating tadpoles. We weren’t sure Fishing Spiders were found in Arizona. Then we located an image of Dolomedes gertschi. It looks identical to your spider and it was photographed in Arizona. Another posted image of Dolomedes gertschi looks quite different. It appears this species was first described in 1973.
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