Tetragnatha montana
| Tetragnatha montana | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Subphylum: | Chelicerata |
| Class: | Arachnida |
| Order: | Araneae |
| Infraorder: | Araneomorphae |
| Family: | Tetragnathidae |
| Genus: | Tetragnatha |
| Species: | T. montana |
| Binomial name | |
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Tetragnatha montana Simon, 1874 |
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| Synonyms | |
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Tetragnatha montana, commonly known as the silver stretch spider, is a species of long-jawed orb weaver from the family Tetragnathidae that has a Palearctic distribution. It preys mostly on flies and mosquitoes. The name silver stretch spider refers to its shiny metallic colour and its habit of extending its legs into a stick like shape.
The silver stretch spider was described by the French naturalist Eugène Simon in 1874 in his work Les arachnides de France. Polish zoologist Władysław Kulczyński named T. solandri in 1903, subsequently classified as the same species. The generic name, Tetragnatha, is made up of Tetra meaning "four" and gnatha meaning "jaws" in Greek; referring to the unusually long chelicerae and fangs of these spiders and the specific name montana means "of the mountains".
The female Tetragnatha montana is larger than the male with a body length of 7–13 mm compared to the male's 6–8 mm. The male has a paracymbium (a genital appendage arising from the base of the cymbium) with a mostly hook-shaped lateral process. In the female, the epigyne has straight or convex posterior margin of epigynal plate. The prosoma is yellow-brown and the sternum is dark brown to black. It has yellow-brown chelicerae, with a small round tubercle adjacent to the dorsal tooth of the male chelicerae. The legs are yellow-brown and the opisthosoma is silver on the dorsal surface with an elongated, silver-white leaf shape outlined in gold with golden wavy borders along the margins and black lines that can sometimes be quite thick with a brown ventral surface. The male has very similar markings on the abdomen to the female but it is a darker, reddish-gold and the colour contrasts are less noticeable than those on the female, and the white or silvery areas are much less extensive. The male's ventral side is brown, with undulating borders and a darker band running along it. The legs differ significantly between the sexes in their length, colour and shape, those of the female being brown, beige or yellow-brown in colour, while those of the male are darker. The leg pairs one, two and four are very long while three is relatively short and is used to help the spider to hold onto thin twigs or grass when resting, while the other three pairs are extended. In both sexes there are often dark rings and spots towards the claws.
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Wikipedia