# Crab spiders and ambush bugs

*Misumena, Phymata*

A flower that gathers this many insects also gathers the things that eat them.

## What it does on milkweed

Crab spiders hold position in a flower head with their front legs spread, and some can shift color between white and yellow over several days to match where they are sitting. Ambush bugs do the same job with raptorial forelegs and take prey many times their own size. Neither builds a web. Both are part of why an umbel is worth watching for ten minutes.

## How to recognize it

Crab spiders sit with the first two pairs of legs held wide, crab-fashion, usually white or yellow. Ambush bugs are small, angular, mottled yellow-brown and green, with thickened front legs.

## Where and when

Throughout the United States.

## Should you do anything about it?

Leave them. A garden that supports predators is working, and their effect on monarch numbers is small next to habitat loss.

### Do spiders eat monarch caterpillars?

Some do, along with wasps, ants, stink bugs and tachinid flies. Predation on eggs and small larvae is heavy in the wild, which is why a female lays hundreds of eggs.

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Source: https://milkweedusa.com/wildlife/crab-spiders-and-ambush-bugs/ — Milkweed USA, CC BY 4.0.