Favoritos de jgw_atx

What a cool find! An uncommonly observed species, probably due to the size. This adult male is a bit over 1.5mm - females are not much bigger. Photographed here on my arm as I was bringing it inside to put in a vial.

While I could not quite get the right angle in the photo, the palp is a good match for the drawings in Levi 1957 and I think you can see enough here to make a reasonable comparison. The other characters also match Levi's description nicely.

I may eventually take this specimen to the UT labs where they have better equipment to examine/photograph it. So, ID is tentative but reasonable I think. Type locality (Llano, Texas) is about 100km NW from here.

No live photos available; ID determined from specimen by Ken Schneider, who also provided the Z-stacked specimen images (copyright California Academy of Sciences). Images also posted to Bug Guide - https://bugguide.net/node/view/2190050

Long legs, dark brown body with little to no markings, perhaps VERY light stripes on the thorax side-to-side, not complete. looks ant-like.

Front part is larger than abdomen. Large visible fangs, small but visible spinnerets.

Front photo with shine is with flash, slightly truer color. Most taken with soft white lighting.

Observations from a trip to the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, October 2006.
Wild Olive Tortoise Beetle - Physonota alutacea (large larvae, 10-12 mm)
bugguide.net/node/view/8350
These bizarre creatures were found on their host plant, Wild Olive (Cordia boissieri - Boraginaceae), a small native tree. BugGuide says that "undisturbed" adults are silvery, but all those I saw had a mostly transparent covering. Larvae are bizarre segmented creatures that remind me of trilobites. They have tail-like appendages that resemble the fleshy appendages of some caterpillars, so I wonder if they are mimics.