Strawberry Flower Opportunists

A crab spider eying a fly on an adjacent petal

While it could be said that every visitor to the strawberry flower is an opportunist, some come with intentions of no apparent benefit to the plant.

Northern Crab Spider, Mecaphesa asperata, and an approaching ant

The Northern Crab Spider, an eighth of an inch long and four times as wide, makes a perch on a petal, a blended calico element in the floral motif. It's an ambush hunter, waiting to snap prey into its outsized, outstretched forelegs‒or forearms. Two of its eight eyes are bulging spheres that keep track of everything in its compass while it waits motionless with a powerful venom to end its victim's struggle immediately. It is reputedly incapable of biting humans.

The spider considering the ant

Crab spiders, like their namesake, can walk deftly in any direction on legs extended outward from the side their low, flat bodies. They do produce silk for drop lines but don't need to weave webs for capturing prey.

The nonchalant ant passing by must be unpalatable, and is probably armed with a formidable stinging ability of its own.

Flower weevil of the family Curculionidae

The insect world is populated with diverse anatomies, uniquely functional to themselves and fantastical to our imaginations.

 Snout-nosed weevils have developed chewing mouthparts at the very end of a long, downward-curved proboscis with elbowed antennae protruding from the sides. These adaptations are useful for feeding and for boring holes in which to lay eggs, traits that make some members of this family extremely destructive agricultural pests.

 This particular beetle is grazing pollen as it rumbles over the strawberry flower stamens, and may in fact be contributing to pollination. In other forages it or its kin tear ragged holes in the petals.

 The weevil's operational mode might inspire creative designs by military engineers. It might be one of the prompts for the wondrous barroom creatures in George Lucas's Star Wars.