Any arachnologists around?

This afternoon Frances noticed a bunch of tiny red spiders on the track heading further up our block.  I went to take some photos and eventually re-located them. I have included the more interesting images here in the hope that someone can identify them.- that has happened - see below.

I'm reasonably sure they are spiders but they are very small - no more than 5mm across the legs, and some considerably smaller than that.  So are they mites?  Yes: my friend Penny has identified them as Red Velvet Mites.

 I wondered if that big red blob was a coloured pebble

 But here the blob is clearly another arachnid.  Possibly a gravid female?


 An ant eventually wandered by and seemed to ignore most of the arachnids.  However this one got in the way and was attacked.
It didn't lookwell afterwards, but to my surprise the ant didn't take the corpse away for eating but just went on its way.

Comments

Sue Catmint said…
thanks for interesting post. It's hard sometimes to tell if a creature is a spider or a mite. I suppose mites are always very small.
28 April 2017 at 22:25:00 GMT+10
Flabmeister said…
I think size is a help. I was suspicious that they were mites since when I scanned "Spiders of Australia"by Volkenau et al the nearest picture was of a Velvet Mite.
29 April 2017 at 05:09:00 GMT+10
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