Famiglia: THOMISIDAE

Nome comune:

Nome scientifico: Monaeses paradoxus (Lucas, 1846)

Global distribution (WSC 2021): Southern Europe, Caucasus, Iran, Africa

GPS (Neapolis):

37.073955, 15.276883

Caratteristiche anatomiche: Ragno dalla forma allungata, il cui corpo è nei maschi 5-8 mm e nelle femmine 7-11 mm. Il corpo di color sabbia e lineato di bianco sui lati e presenta due strisce marroni ai lati del prosoma. A differenza degli altri Thomisidi questa specie tiene le zampe in posizione prograda, per rendersi mimetica sugli steli di erba secca o sui rametti.

Comportamento: Questa specie è un predatore d’agguato, le sue caratteristiche anatomiche gli permettono di mimetizzarsi con molta efficacia sugli steli d’erba secca, sui quali sosta attendendo insetti di passaggio da predare. Molto difficile da osservare per queste sue caratteristiche e perché se disturbata si lascia cadere al suolo immobilizzandosi, fingendosi morta (Tanatosi: un meccanismo di difesa di molti ragni ed altri animali; il rendersi immobili rende difficile il distinguerli dal substrato, o, in alternativa, crea disinteresse da parte di un predatore)

Anatomical features: An elongated spider whose body is 5-8 mm in males and 7-11 mm in females. The body is sand-coloured with white lines on the sides and two brown stripes on the sides of the prosoma. Unlike other Thomisids, this species keeps its legs in a prograde position to camouflage itself on dry grass stalks or twigs.

Behaviour: This species is an ambush predator, its anatomical characteristics allow it to camouflage itself very effectively on dry grass stalks, where it stops to wait for passing insects to be preyed upon. It is very difficult to observe because of these characteristics and because if disturbed it will drop to the ground and become immobile, pretending to be dead (Tanatosis: a defence mechanism of many spiders and other animals; becoming immobile makes it difficult to distinguish them from the substrate, or alternatively, creates disinterest on the part of a predator).

Drift is old – a primordial power of the Earth. In the warm, young, abiotic Earth, before the ‘zoic’ aeons when life became dominant, matter’s self-organising powers could operate without constraint; and they innovated. The innovations of drift were profound for the Earth. Each of these innovations has been rediscovered, again
and again, by other non-drifting beings; but it is in drift that these innovations come together most powerfully and consequentially for our planet.
…
Drift is still active all around us, and continues its powerful but (usually) gentle work. Yet drift did not have the last word. With the arrival of animals about half a billion years ago, a radically new form of motion appeared within the Earth – locomotion, motion to a predetermined point, powered by energy stored within the
moving body itself. … We have seen that directed, powered ‘locomotion’ represents the way that only a tiny part of the planet moves and occupies space and does its work. Yet it tends to occupy human consciousness as the paradigm form of motion – as if we motile animals should be the measure of all things, so that anything that does not
move ‘under its own steam’ suffers from some kind of metaphysical privation. But if any form of motion should be the unmarked category, so that all others are merely derivative, it should surely be drift. We need to value drift more, and understand it better
…
Drift as a way of thinking divides and joins the world differently to locomotion, which encourages us to make a division between the active animal and its passive environment. In drift, we are not driving – and neither are we being driven. Although in drift there is a division between the air and the balloon, the carrier and the carried, the medium and the message, the resulting motion is a single motion, one which results from the immersion of the body in the medium, and is the conjoined achievement of all.
…
If drift is gift – a blessèd share of motion given without expectation of return, an action without an equal and opposite reaction – we need to ask what acts of solidarity drift should draw from us.

Bronislaw Szerszynski - “Drift as a Planetary Phenomenon,” in Performance Research

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