“The Opiliones are an order of arachnids colloquially known as harvestmen…”
Title of the thread: arachnida. Not saying that they are spiders, but they are arachnids, so they still belong in this thread 
Arachnida indeed.
as for the golden orb weaver eating the smaller spider, that smaller spider is likely a junior female rival, and certainly not the male. if we go back up a bit to one of the three pictures of Nephila posted by Ibis, you can see a male or two in the background. The male is much much smaller (weighing about 100 times less) and is colored bright orange, top left of the big female.
Nephila are great. They are widespread across the Asia-Pacific tropics and subtropics, down to Sydney in Australia. one of my faves!
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I’ve once had a small family of those living between my ac unit (the outside thing…converter in English?) and the wall. None of them has ever tried to come inside, so my wife was happy about it.
They’re not common around my house though, there are nearly no trees in my area (rice fields kingdom), so maybe they were living in the trees from the nearby riverside and decided to hike a bit. They’ve only been with us for a summer, though. The tiny jumping spiders are much more common.
In late spring/summer when they start to show up in the hills, especially around lakes and rivers, I always like to go hiking and “hunt” them, they’re so cool. I think on the pc I have a photo of a spider that looked just like a nephila but completely red, when I get home I’ll see if I can find it.
Nephila is an incredibly badass name
Do they spin ?_? I only see them sitting at the center of their huge nets like absolute bosses.
The thread is totally about all arachnid, not just spiders. Vinegaroons are awesome, I love them. I’ve witnessed pairs defend each other protecting.eggs and.first in star, they are pretty cool.
Nephila is a pretty cool name.those big webs they are being boss on got spun somehow. Watch them spin more when a bird or bat gets stuck in the orb.
I’ve always assumed the red spiders always seen in their webs are not immature ones, but a different (parasitish) species. Always see them sneaking in on leftovers.
Found this yesterday, about 2-3mm, but very pretty.
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im curious about the brown color morph. I asked a spider community many years ago but not clear answer. The large black and brown Nephila are they the same species? sub species?
That’s pretty much the whole animal in focus. How did you take the picture? I guess it was a super compact camera or perhaps the phone…?
the brown color morph is more common in Australia, but web search shows pictures of them taken in many parts of SE Asia as well. Admittedly, yours is a lot more red. but there is variation…
and
Mark Harvey, author of that article, knows a thing or two about spiders…
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Nice one. So it says those little.guys are the males, damn. I would of lost money on that bet.
Thanks for the article.
There is very little dof needed when things are that tiny 
that was on a regular compact camera.
Maybe they bully the little spiders into making the web.
Very little dof is not enough in most of the cases, but if you use a compact camera then we have a different concept of shallow dof.
Check my jumping spider.
I think I have at least TWO of these jumping spiders. As long as they don’t get inside my bed by night and bite me, I’m OK with sharing my home with them.
The picture is a crop of the original. I trapped this thing with a white cup and took pictures of the little fellow inside of it (nice white background!).
@Explant check this picture. As you see, most of the animal is out of focus, and IIRC the F stop was like 16, which is kinda high (not the highest number though). This is because of the distance from the lens to the sensor, which is very different in FF cameras like mine and compact cameras like yours.
Wow great shot man, looks great. Indeed, if you are super close the DOF goes razor thin. If the subject is more than a couple mm just bring it back a bit and use a zoom lens, takes care of that issue a little.
For people really into focus on micro/macro there are some cool programs like helicon focus (sp?) that will stack images and merge them in focus. Very hard with animals or in the field as things move, but I used to use it with the microscope and a dslr stuck to it for seed and pollen photos which have the same problem (being round) under magnification.
I think though, unless its for study, a thin d of adds a sense of artistic beauty, like your photo. It looks amazing. My photo is on a metal tray and nothing more than showing its general body shape and color, nothing artistic or pleasurable. Photographers are good at making things stand out and catch the eye, I’m terrible at it haha, I care more about seeing certain parts of the body for identification.
Hope to get my field camera fixed soon, I’m itching for some field time now!
Edit
Yeah I knew about stacking photography but the problem I saw is what you said: try to convince the subject to stay still. Still some people seem to manage to do it successfully. I guess tgey drug their models xD
As for the microscope photography… I’d love to find a good AND cheap mount for my dslr… I’ve seen microthings people wouldn’t believe!
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Ya, animals that don’t listen are an issue. I have great respect for those guys sitting in mud for 5 hours with a tripod waiting for a shot. Drugging is wrong, totally against it, but that’s really mostly just for larger stuff, especially mammals. Little critters tend to get the fridge treatment to.slow them down, which I also find incredibly wrong.
My mount was cheap, under
100 USD. The problem I found out first was they needed some care on mounting to the eye piece, as in not to far, when the mirror flips it can hit the eye piece and scratch it…I did that, phuck
Also because of the vast variety in camera and microscope the general types are not air tight and dust gets in very easily and makes the censor dirty. Now I make shift it to block the cracks so dust and light doesn’t seep in. But with scopes you do t have a sense so your depth goes to nearly zero. You also need secondary lights
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