Flower Spider
Australomisidia cruentata (previously Diaea cruentata).
 NEW There's an alternative version of this page at the new website www.ark.au/flower-spider.html Other Names: Blood-Stained Flower Spider, Crab spider, Australomisidia cruentata, Diaea cruentata, Diaea bilimbatus.
Family: Thomisidae (Crab Spiders). Over 120 species in 23 genera in Australa, many more are still undescribed. About 2,100 species in 175 genera worldwide.
Size: Male body 3 mm, female body 5 mm
Distribution: Common in NSW and QLD.
Status: Common. Habitat: They are especially common in flowers of Pultenaea species (which are bush peas with yellow flowers, sometimes called "Eggs and Bacon").
References: Whyte and Anderson.
Note that dead spiders usually fade in colour, so nearly all the spiders will look blacker or darker in colour in real life than they do in the photos of dead spiders from the museum. 
Photo taken at Australian Museum, Sydney. High Resolution 2468 x 1712.
Source: Wikipedia. Public domain photo by USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab. An unknown crab spider (family Thomisidae) or perhaps running crab spider (family Philodromidae). Beltsville, Maryland, USA. High Resolution 2136 x 1884.
Recommended Reading
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A Guide to the Spiders of Australia, by Volker W. Framenau, Barbara C. Baehr, and Paul Zborowski. This is a great field guide to Australian spiders. It's a toss up between this one and Spiderwatch for my second favourite spider field guide. This one is a lot different to Spiderwatch. It's got more than twice the number of pages. It's got much better photos. It comes with a soft clear plastic cover protecting the usual soft cover. On the other side of the argument, it's got no index other than an index of family names (i.e. no index of actual spider names, not their common names and not their scientific names). Which makes it hard to find things in it, if you don't know what family they are in. Also it's based on families and not individual spider species. It's still a wonderful book though. From the publisher, "This definitive guide to the subject, written by three experts in the field, offers a window into a fascinating world. Notorious species such as the Redback and the Sydney Funnel-web sit alongside less wellknown but equally intriguing spiders such as the ant-mimics and net-casting spiders. The introduction covers spider structure, evolution, reproduction, silk and venom, together with peculiarities of the family within an Australian context.
The two main sections of the book deal with Trapdoor Spiders and Modern Spiders, and within each section there is a chapter on each of the 80 or so spider families that occur in Australia. Each is illustrated with beautiful photographs of the subjects, with more than 30 images per family for some of the larger groups such as the jumping spiders, and many rare images never before published. "
Purchase from Amazon.com.au (Australian Site)
| See Also
Australian Mammals
Australian Birds
Australian Reptiles
Australian Frogs
Australian Fish
Australian Wild Plant Foods
Return to Australian Spiders
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