A small spider that comes in a variety of colours including blue, white, and yellow.
They generally have a broad profile, with the four pairs of legs clumped together helping them camouflage.
They are fantastic ambush hunters. You generally find them sitting on flowers in the garden or out in the veld.
They generally match the colour of the flower, but occasionally you will find a yellow spider on a white flower or the other way around.
The Thomisidae are a family of spiders, including about 170 genera and over 2,100 species. The common name crab spider is often linked to species in this family, but is also applied loosely to many other families of spiders.
Many members of this family are also known as flower spiders or flower crab spiders.
Thomisus onustus is a crab spider belonging to the genus Thomisus. These spiders are found across Europe, North Africa, and parts of the Middle East and Asia.
T. onustus reside in flowers in lowland vegetation. Females are distinguished by their larger size and ability to change color between white, yellow, and pink as a means of matching flower color.
This cryptic mimicry allows them to both evade predators and enhance insect prey capture abilities.
Males are smaller, more slender, and drab in coloration, usually green or brown. T. onustus is also distinguished from other relatives by its distinct life cycle patterns in which spiderlings emerge in either late summer or early spring.
Furthermore, T. onustus have developed a mutualistic relationship with host plants where spiders feed on and/or deter harmful florivores while benefiting from the plant’s supply of pollen and nectar, which T. onustus spiders are able to use as food sources, especially during periods of low insect prey abundance.
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