I’ve been collecting spiders for a bit and I really want to take good photographs of their epigyne/palps, but I’ve never figured out the proper placement. I know that both should be viewed/photographed under ethanol, but when I try to do this eg. place the palps in a petri dish with ethanol, they al…

fill the petri dish with silica beads. They absorb the alcohol, and become transparent. You can then use them as a base for manipulating the palps to the correct position/angle. The following observation was of a small spider caught in a pitfall trap, the photos are under a usb microscope and a petr…

Some people also use fine purified sand, like the kind you can buy in a pet store for your lizard terrarium.

For small money spiders, clear alcohol hand gel is an excellent temporary mounting medium allowing positioning of the spider (or other small insects) on a microscope slide. [Diplostyla%20concolor%20epigyne]

[image] cosmophasis: I’m not sure the silica beads will stop it from floating around. ethanol is less dense than water, about 0.8x, so you shouldn’t have problems of the palps floating. if they do, just stack the silica in a sloping fashion, and place the palps at the point where they are jus…

I haven’t had any problems with palps floating around, but dissected epigynes are another story. It’s quite a challenge sometimes to keep them positioned just right for photographing. I haven’t tried hand gel as I worried about it leaving a residue. Is the hand gel easy to clean off? Any other sugge…

Thanks again for all your replies! Thanks for responding to my concerns regarding the palps floating, this was my strange experience with the palps of a Myrmarachne specimen. I will try again using the silica beads in a sloping fashion, and post results here too for future reference. Regarding the…

[image] cosmophasis: Regarding the use of hand gel, I resonate with @kaldari’s concern with the medium leaving a residue, as I would like to have these specimen stored permenantly. I’m thinking one that is alcohol based should be fine. One of the other ingredients used is glycerine, which has…

The hand gel is very easy to clean off with no residue. Specimens can be cleaned either in water or 70% alcohol.

Personally I try to avoid removing palps if I can get the ID without removing them, but if I do I usually partially submerge them in sand to get a good look at them. Usually with a tray of sand, or silica beads it is possible to angle the spiders in such a way that the parts of the palps needed for …

Photographing Spider Specimen

Nature Talk

cosmophasis March 25, 2019, 8:54am 4

Thanks for the suggestions @kiwifergus @zygy!
Does this also work when the palps are detached from the spider? I’m not sure the silica beads will stop it from floating around.

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Photographing Spider Specimen

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