S'Albufera de Mallorca

[Erland R.N.]

Took a plane away from the cold, down to the Spanish island Mallorca.
The hotel was only four kilometers away from the Natural Park called S'Albufera de Mallorca, a wetland area.

All with Canon 5D and Sigma 180/3.5 lens and monopod.

Big grashopper nymph, about 60 mm long.

Uncropped, f/13, 252 mm lens (180 + 1,4x)

Wasp spider (Argiope bruennichi) with company in the web. It tried to scare off the intruder by pulling and releasing a thread in the web with one of the rear legs.

Uncropped, f/13, 252 mm lens

Big bloodsucking fly, maybe around 20 mm long.

Uncropped, f/11, 252 mm lens

Managed to get picture of a damselfly and a dragonfly I had not photographed before the trip. Went to the park all six days, and only managed some distant (but ok) photos of Lesser Emperor dragonfly the last day.

cheers
Erland

[Ken Ramos]

These are really great there Erland, especially the grasshopper. Ah yes, Mallorca very nice indeed. To bad I was not doing much photography back then. I really enjoyed Spain, the mainland mostly. My favroite though would have to be Palma/Palma Nova but then again, Barcelona was fantastic too!

[Bruce Williams]

That grasshopper nymph must be very impressive viewed at full resolution Erland. Beautifully detailed even at 467X700 and perfectly exposed too.

It would be interesting to know what that thick, zig-zag webbing is all about. Apparently (according to my Collins field guide to Spiders of Britain and Northern Europe) the younger females add more decoration to their webs than the more mature females. Suggests that this might be an older female possibly? Do you think that the little guy is a male of the species?

Three nice pics - look forward to seeing some more from your trip.

Bruce

[Erland R.N.]

I'm glad you like the grasshopper, the finding of this green fellow, really made me go "wow".

Ken, I've only been to Spanish mainland once, in the Pyrrenees on motorcycle, but hope to go in 2008. I've got a friend who's into photographing too, and he just love Spain, and speaks spanish too. So we might have a go at a macro-spain adventure.

Bruce, I've posted a couple of pictures of the spider on a Danish forum, where the admin is an expert on spiders. I may get an answer to what is really going on in the web. Note the fly sitting on the packed-in prey, only barely visible at the reduced image size.
It passed my mind too that the smaller spider could be a male, but I think it would look more similar to the female, with strips on the legs at least. But I'm not really sure.

Erland

[beetleman]

Excellent photos Erland. Very colorful and well done. There is a name for that zig-zag structure in the web. It has been talked about in the forums before....not sure where or when.

[MacroLuv]

Hey, that is one big baby!
And very fine photo!
Mallorca you said?
Must be some nice girls there also!
Ken, Palma de Mallorca, it is the mayor city I think?

[rjlittlefield]

There is a name for that zig-zag structure in the web.

It's called a "stabilimentum", from the early theory (now discarded) that it stabilized the web.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_decorations notes that it may play a role in mating:

One theory has been put forward that the purpose of the stabilimentum is to attract the male of the species to the web when the female is ready to reproduce. A limited study[5] carried out in the Calahonda area of Spain in the summer of 1992 showed that there was a positive correlation between the presence of a male in the webs of Argiope lobata and the presence of a stabilimentum.

Lovely pictures, as always!

--Rik

Edit: Well, as usual, I got curious and did a bit more digging. An article in Behavioral Ecology (here) notes that

ABSTRACT Orb-weaving spiders are ideal organisms for the study of conflict between behavioral investments in foraging and defense because their webs provide physical manifestations of those investments. We examined the impact of including stabilimenta, designs of bright-white noncapture silk, at the center of orb webs for foraging and defense in Argiope aurantia. Our findings suggest that stabilimentum building is a defensive behavior, supporting the "web advertisement" hypothesis that the high visibility of stabilimenta can prevent birds from flying through webs. Yet, spiders often do not include stabilimenta in their webs, indicating that a serious cost is associated with them. We also show, through comparison of paired webs with and without stabilimenta, that stabilimenta reduce the prey capture success of spiders by almost 30%. This demonstrates the potential impact that defensive behaviors of spiders can have on their foraging success and suggests that much of the variation in stabilimenta may be accounted for by a cost—benefit trade-off made when including stabilimenta in webs.

Trade-offs, trade-offs. Everywhere you go, it's one thing or the other. Or the other, or the other...

[Wim van Egmond]

Nice images! I am almost sure that that is the male of the Argiope spider. There is often a size difference between male and female. So that makes it a spider's divorce!

Wim

[MacroLuv]

Nice images! I am almost sure that that is the male of the Argiope spider. There is often a size difference between male and female. So that makes it a spider's divorce!

Wim

Agree! I've seen oftenly these little guys squating in some of the big gals web corners.