Green Lynx Spider

My wife and I recently returned from a road trip to the southern tip of Texas, November 4-ll. One of the spiders we encountered most frequently was the Green Lynx Spider, Peucetia viridans. Several of the specimens we found were females guarding egg sacs.

The Green Lynx is atypical of other lynx spiders in the family Oxyopidae in being much, much larger than average. Adult females may reach 26 millimeters, with a legspan of 70 millimeters, though the typical size range is 14-16 millimeters in body length. Males are only slightly smaller. Most specimens are indeed bright green, though many individuals from the southwest U.S. can be yellowish or even brown, the better to blend in with drier vegetation.

Green Lynx Spiders are agile and can actively pursue prey by running and even jumping, but most of the time you find them sitting motionless among flowers or foliage where they can ambush insects like bees, wasps, and caterpillars. They are also not averse to eating their own kind, as demonstrated in the image below.

I have seen many individuals, both adults and juveniles, on prickly pear cacti (Opuntia spp.), where they are protected from many of their own predators while supplied with prey that visit the flowers or seek shelter on the shady side of the cactus pads.

The scientific literature states that Peucetia viridans does not spin a web, but my own observations reveal that females at least construct what could be described as a “nursery web” around the vicinity of their egg sac. The spiderlings that emerge from the sac may add their own silk strands to the web. Images I have of other specimens show a weak network of silken lines that may help anchor the spider to the substrate should it encounter strong, struggling prey.

The egg sacs of Green Lynx Spiders have a surprising array of predators, so it is no surprise that the mother spider vigorously protects her offspring from danger. One study showed that the longlegged sac spider Cheiracanthium inclusum is a major threat to egg sacs and the spiderlings that hatch from them. Other predators include acrobat ants (Crematogaster sp.), soldier beetle larvae (Chauliognathus pennsylvanicus), and even grasshoppers and tree crickets (Willey and Adler, 1989).

Each egg sac contains between 25 and 600 eggs. The bowl-shaped sac averages 12-25 millimeters in diameter but can be easily embraced by the female’s legs. Females in captivity have produced up to six egg sacs during their lifetime.

Female Green Lynx Spiders are known to spit venom from their fangs to repel perceived attacks by scientists studying them, and probably perform this behavior in the face of threats from other vertebrate predators and/or large invertebrates (Fink, 1984).

Despite their large size as adults, these are highly cryptic spiders, so look carefully to find them. They seem to prefer fields, forest edges, and arid habitats, from Maryland to Florida and across the southern third of the U.S. to California. There is an additional species in the southwest, P. longipalpis, that can be easily confused with P. viridans. It requires examination of the mature sexual organs to tell them apart.

Enjoy hunting for the Green Lynx. It is a truly beautiful and photogenic arachnid.

Sources: Bradley, Richard A. 2013. Common Spiders of North America. Berkeley: University of California Press. 271 pp.
Fink, Linda S. 1984. “Venom Spitting by the Green Lynx Spider, Peucetia viridans (Araneae, Oxyopidae),” J. Arachnol. 12: 373.
Willey, Marianne B. and Peter H. Adler. 1989. “Biology of Peucetia viridans (Araneae, Oxyopidae) in South Carolina, With Special Reference to Predation and Maternal Care,” J. Arachnol. 17: 275-284

Spider Sunday: Striped Lynx Spider

Do you want to see a lynx? You don’t even have to go to the zoo. Chances are, in your own backyard, you can find one. Ok, maybe not the cat, but its namesake arachnid, the lynx spider (family Oxyopidae). I remember a book from my childhood called The Tall Grass Zoo, by Winifred Lubell. The lynx spider would have fit in perfectly. The Striped Lynx Spider, Oxyopes salticus, is a particularly handsome species.

Lynx spiders do in fact get their name from their cat-like styles of hunting. They either wait patiently in ambush, or actively stalk and pounce. Most are diminutive in size. Mature females of the Striped Lynx Spider are only 5.7-6.7 millimeters in body length, males 4-4.5 millimeters. The legspan is roughly 20 millimeters.

They might be mistaken for wolf spiders or jumping spiders at first glance, but note that their lanky, slender legs are all armed with long spines. The high “forehead” and eye arrangement of lynx spiders also set them apart from similar spiders.

Oxyopes salticus occurs throughout the United States and south to South America. It seems to favor fields dominated by brome grasses, rather than shortgrass prairies (Fitch, 1963). I found it to be common in moist, tall grass meadows in the forest preserves of the greater Chicago area of Illinois. Apparently, the species is scarce or absent in the Rocky Mountain states and Great Basin.

Each female fastens her egg sac to stems of grasses with a minimal web of threads, then guards the brood until the spiderlings hatch. Immature spiders apparently overwinter, reaching adulthood in late spring or early summer. Males resemble the female shown here, but the abdomen of males is covered in reflective scales that give the animal an iridescent appearance.

The sheer abundance of the Striped Lynx Spider in grassy habitats has made the species the focus of natural biocontrol of pest insects in agricultural systems, too. Known prey includes such pests as the Tarnished Plant Bug (Lygus lineolaris), Rapid Plant Bug (Adelphocoris rapidus), Cotton Fleahopper (Pseudatomoscilis seriatus), Tobacco Budworm (Heliothis virescens), and Cotton Bollworm (Helicoverpa armigera), so the potential impact on cotton plantations alone would seem promising. One study (Lockley and Young, 1987) conducted in cotton fields in Mississippi revealed that the Tarnished Plant Bug was a favorite prey item. Mosquitoes (Aedes sp.) were also killed, along with plenty of other prey species from several insect orders. Interestingly, there were no observed instances of cannibalism, or even predation on any other kind of spider. That is remarkable, since most spiders won’t pass up opportunities for eight-legged meals.

Special thanks to John Balaban for taking me into the Miami Woods Forest Preserve in Morton Grove, Illinois on June 22, 2011, where I found the specimen shown in these images. The forest preserve system around Chicago is a real urban wilderness treasure.

Sources: Brady, Alan R. 1975. “The Lynx Spider Genus Oxyopes in Mexico and Central America (Araneae, Oxyopidae),” Psyche 82: 189-243
Fitch, Henry S. 1963. Spiders of the University of Kansas Natural History Reservation and Rockefeller Experimental Tract. Lawrence: University of Kansas Museum of Natural History Miscellaneous Publication No. 33. 202 pp.
Lockley, Timothy C. and Orrey P. Young. 1987. “Prey of the Striped Lynx Spider Oxyopes salticus (Araneae, Oxyopidae) on Cotton in the Delta Area of Mississippi,” J. Arach. 14: 395-397.
Weber, Larry. 2003. Spiders of the North Woods. Duluth, Minnesota: Kollath+Stensaas Publishing. 205 pp.