On location:
A spider wasp (Pompilidae) has the rather gruesome habit of biting through the legs of its paralyzed spider prey in order to maintain the spider's immobility as it plays host to the eggs which will be subsequently deposited:
A brown widow (Latrodectus geometricus) has caught a fearsome and venomous challenger, a wandering spider (Phoneutria sp.).
Come night, a variety of bizarre caste of characters emerges:
Psychedelic sinusoidal waveform (Erotylus incomparabilis):
A net-casting spider (Deinopidae) hurls its web which is not "sticky" in the typical chemical/glycoprotein sense, but rather is made of cribellate silk, pulled from thousands of micropores in a specialized plate and combed into fuzzy texture which uses a combination of physical entanglement on the nano-scale, Van Der Waals and electrostatic forces:
A female katydid with its blade-like ovipositor cuts between the lamina of a leaf to deposit its eggs:
A stink bug (Edessa sp.) laying down a line of eggs:
The protection of these developing eggs by these Pseudomyrmecine ants is a byproduct of the mutualistic relationship between the Tangarana tree which provides food and housing, and the ants. Generally the ants are able to remove pretty much any potential threat to the tree (except perhaps some subversive hemipterans). The gelatinous egg mass poses either a physical or chemical deterrent to their removal. Thus the frog eggs seem to have managed to exploit the ant/tree relationship, though not at the expense of either partner.
Thanks for looking and commenting,
Paul
