The green crab spider is mostly smooth, with with few spines on the legs, and the entire body and legs are pale green to silvery white. Sometimes it has pink markings. Like other crab spiders, its legs extend outward from the sides, and it can walk in any direction. The green crab spider blends in well with the broad leaves of shrubs where it lives and hunts.
Males are smaller-bodied than females, but the two front pairs of legs are proportionately longer; also, the legs are banded with red.
Similar species: There are several groups of crab spiders. All crab spiders generally resemble crabs: Their legs extend outward from the sides, and they can walk in any direction. Many live in leaves or flowers and capture prey simply by grabbing and biting it. Crab spiders can be difficult to identify to species, and even to genus. Specialists examine tiny anatomical details, such as the configuration of the eyes, to verify their IDs.
- The green crab spider's relatively few spines on the carapace and abdomen helps distinguish it from the similar-looking northern crab spider and green crab spider (both in genus Mecaphesa), whose carapace and abdomen are prominently spined.
Length (not including appendages): about ¼ inch; males smaller, only about ⅛ inch.
Statewide.
Habitat and Conservation
This species is typically found on the leaves of shrubs or lower leaves of trees, also on herbaceous plants, including flowers. May occur in a variety of habitats, including forests and woodlands, woodland borders, thickets, streamsides, roadsides, and parks, yards, and gardens.
This species, like other crab spiders, does not live in webs.
Food
The green crab spider doesn’t use webs to capture its prey; instead, it hides on the leaves of shrubs and trees and waits for insects to come along. Crab spiders blend in with the vegetation they rest on.
Unlike spiders that spin webs, crab spiders have good vision. When a moth, fly, or other prey lands nearby, the crab spider attacks, injects venom into the prey, then holds it while drinking its juices.
Status
Taxonomy: This species was formerly named Misumenops oblonga. It and several other species were split away from the similar-looking genus Misumenops in 2008.
Life Cycle
Young spiders emerge from egg cases, then disperse, hunt, grow, mature, mate, and create more egg cases. Females of this species secure their egg cases in folded-over leaves tied together with silk. The female continues to create egg cases as long as she can. As temperatures cool in fall, the metabolism of spiders slows, the amount of insect prey dwindles, and they generally die when it freezes.
Human Connections
Green crab spiders roam the leaves of shrubs and trees, capturing and eating roosting mosquitoes and other insects that humans consider pests.
Ecosystem Connections
Predators, including these small spiders, control the numbers of the species they prey on, helping to maintaining the balance of nature. Spiders, including their eggs and young, provide food for other predators, including other spiders.
