emily_r's Favorites

I was mucking around in a rock pool when this bird popped up a couple of meters away and gave me a surprise. It swam around the edges feeding, then jumped out to warm up a bit before moving to the next rock pool. Completely unconcerned about me being there.

An amazing glass squid. When I disturbed it it would tuck in its tentacles and eyes, and even its fins and show big spots. So cool. The area around the brain was brightly iridescent. There are very faint long tubercles around the mantle if that helps with species id.
Really hard to get nice shots with a compact camera sadly.

~2.5cm long

Pantopsalis male speared the spider's abdomen in an attack from behind.
While trying to get away, the spider almost severed the connection between the thorax and the abdomen.
The spider succumbed eventually.

Adult male Forsteropsalis bona. This species is distinguished by extremely dilated chelicera II segment, long bow-like fingers of chelicera segment III, a lack of dense plumose setae on the pedipalps (ruling out sympatric F. photophaga), denticulation of chelicera is also not hypertrophied (also rules out F. photophaga), a lack of distinct apophysis on the pedipalp (ruling out F. fabulosa), prosoma/carapace and area around ocularium (eyes) is entirely unarmed (no denticulation).

Distinguished from Forsteropsalis pureora by lack of light median stripe running down opisthosoma and disproportionally longer pedipalps in F. bona. Forsteropsalis pureora has denticulation on the prosomoa while F. bona is unarmed. Tooth shape/pattern/presence of the fingers of chelicera III is also a useful character but dilation of chelicera segment II is not reliable because of intraspecific weapon polymorphism prevalent in this family.

Collected nearby localities of holotype and paratype specimens. Collected on rock wall above stream near cave entrance.