Spider pedipalp -- stereo pairs added

[tpe]

Very nice indeed. The only thing that would really improve it for me is if you could catch one red handed so to speak, just to see how the the sperm packet is attached, it looks as if there is nothing that moves, so some kind of sticky hairs or something? possibly the brown ones slightly obsured by what looks rather claw spike like? Very usefull to have the stereo pairs too .

tim

[rjlittlefield]

if you could catch one red handed so to speak, just to see how the the sperm packet is attached, it looks as if there is nothing that moves, so some kind of sticky hairs or something?

You may be amused by this quote from this book I got for Christmas.

Recently, a freeze-fixation of mating spiders with liquid nitrogen and subsequent serial sectioning of the locked copulatory organs have provided further insights into their function (Huber, 1993, 1994).

[ISBN 978-0-19-509594-4, pg.184]

--Rik

[rjlittlefield]

Betty, thanks for the feedback and nice words. (I confess, I just now noticed your post. It had the bad fortune to end up at the bottom of the first page, and tpe's posting only 1/2 hour later started a second page.)

It's interesting -- I just now took another look at this specimen directly under a dissecting scope at 45X. The view is very disappointing. Even with pingpong lighting, I have to hunt for feathered hairs. The scope view is better than the small stereo, but not even as good as the large stereo, let alone the large image in first post. Hhmmm...

--Rik

[Ken Ramos]

Rik posted:

Rainer F. Foelix, in Biology of Spiders wrote:
Recently, a freeze-fixation of mating spiders with liquid nitrogen and subsequent serial sectioning of the locked copulatory organs have provided further insights into their function (Huber, 1993, 1994).

[ISBN 978-0-19-509594-4, pg.184]

You know, I don't know who this guy is but I would advise keeping a close eye on and a good distance away from him and Manassas Va.

[Graham Stabler]

Rik,

That 3D microscope might be using two mirrors to provide the orbiting effect as they often do on PCB inspection, I'm guessing they then just have another axis to tilt the sample. Doesn't seem to do stacking, can't tell. no photos is a bad sign in my book.

Could be a neat method, I'm still working on mine having to pause now for some proposal writing, I do have two small steppers (20mm across) and a small rotary stage from newport so just some machining now.

Another way:

http://www.keyence.com/products/vision/ ... ures_1.php

they also have an encoder on the focusing knob for stacking.

Graham

[rjlittlefield]

Updating this thread to add some further information...

Shortly after I posted these images (now 2-1/2 years ago!), I wrote to spider expert Rod Crawford at the University of Washington to ask what he thought of them. He replied that:

You didn't specifically ask for an ID, but reading between the lines: it's Hololena nedra, a native species that's a common to abundant house spider in some eastern Washington cities. Same family as Tegenaria, and both have the feathery hairs. The eyes differ strongly between the 2, though. It wasn't all that easy to recognize due to being from an odd angle. These things are so complex that they can look completely different with a little change in angle. The conventional view would be a straight ventral (with the cymbium, the hairy part of the bulb, showing equally on both sides).

The large one shows the wrinkles on the tegulum almost as well as an SEM - must have got the light exactly right.

My apologies for not passing this along earlier.

--Rik

[papilio]

Wow, brilliant image Rik!