Wolf spider?

Unidentified2

This was a very shy little spider. She was about one inch long, and the more I poked it, the more it shrank and tried to cover itself. Too bad, such beautiful colors!

Which brings me to wondering… what kind of spider is this? In that area of our backyard, I am used to seeing a lot of wolf spiders, and although the pattern on its back looks about right, I’ve never seen an orange one. Not only was it orange, but it had purple iridescence! Very unusual.

Another thing that I noticed looking closer, is that the eyes don’t match the patterns that are common for wolf spiders. I am used to expect that wolf spiders always have 4 eyes lined up right on top of the chelicerae, but I could be wrong and there are species that don’t follow that rule.
But I looked and looked, and I can’t seem to find a pair of eyes… aren’t spiders with 6 eyes a little uncommon?

Unidentified1

So I have been looking, and I thought that some Pisauridae look a bit similar, but I really have no idea of what this spider is.

If any of my 3 or 4 readers out there have any insight, write me!

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Wolf spider? by The Bug Lady, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

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5 Responses to “Wolf spider?”

  1. Cedric says:
    January 29, 2010 at 13:54

    I don’t think I’ve ever seen a wolf spider with colors so vibrant. It’s probably something else.

    Reply
  2. The Bug Lady » Wolf spider’s eyes says:
    February 3, 2010 at 21:17

    [...] case you were wondering what a wolf spiders eyes look like after reading my previous post, they usually look like [...]

    Reply
  3. Ajithkumar Chandramouli says:
    February 26, 2010 at 11:24

    I appreciate the work that you have put in, in this page. Really good,

    Reply
  4. Techuser says:
    April 14, 2010 at 20:11

    You gonna love the news, its from the wandering spider family :D
    I dont know the species, but its possibly from the same as this full grown one:
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/techuser/4412494548/in/set-72157603167029346/
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/techuser/4369226850/in/set-72157603167029346/

    Reply
  5. BugLady says:
    April 20, 2010 at 22:28

    Ah yes, I received an e-mail a while ago from Pirrakas saying:

    Well, I think I really can see the eight eyes… look, it will be like this image… http://bugguide.net/node/view/108834/bgimage
    There’s six eyes in the upper file (two tiny ones a little bit bellow the four bigger ones) and then the two eyes in the file bellow.
    I’m not an expert in aracnids, so I can’t tell you for sure, but your image looks like the “tropical wolf spiders” (genus CTENUS) in this “bugguide” site. And if you look at the images of the other ctenidae family (anahita)- http://bugguide.net/node/view/73882/bgimage -you can see more clearly the eye pattern.

    I meant to post that, I forgot!

    Thank you for your interest in my pics, Techuser. You comments are very welcome! :)

    Reply

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