on Finding the Ant Mimicking Spider

I went through my archive and found the most curious Jumping Spider that I still have yet to blog about. This is the jumper that I have long searched for. In all my years of macro photography, I encountered it only twice and this was the first time I had a good shot of it.

The Salticidae I am talking about is the Ant Mimicking Spider (Myrmarachne). There are a lot of species found in the Philippines but so far, this is the only one found in our garden. I found it on top of the car because it looked weird for an ant. When I took a closer look, I found that it huge jaws and fangs. I took some shots of it before it fled when a bigger Salticidae arrived. If you compared it side by side to the more common jumpers, it will be relatively small and looks incapable of fighting off the larger ones like the Cosmophasis I posted in my last blog.

Here are two of the shots I got for the Ant Mimicking Spider on top of the car. Shot with the same 90mm macro and 50mm reverse stack and an on-cam mounted strobe with an omni-bound diffuser. The greenish tint is from the reflection of the leaves.

I will search for these spiders more this summer. I don't really know how to track them down since I only saw it twice. The next one I find, I will probably observe it more so I get an idea of how they behave and where they are commonly found. Wish me luck!