The crab spider does not weave a web to catch its prey, it catches its prey by waiting for it to visit the flower on which it is very well disguised.
Insects visiting the flower, such as hover flies, bees, wasps, buterflies or beetles, most often larger than the spider itself, fall prey to the crab spider. It uses its pair of two powerful and highly enlarged front legs and grabs the insect as it lands on the flower. The crab spider kills its prey by biting it on the back of its neck.
The female has the ability to change its colour to white, yellow or pink to match the colour of the flower it is waiting on. It is so camouflaged that neither its prey nor its predators can see it. The female is larger than the male. The male is smaller, more slender and are not so colourful as the female, but are usually green or brown. Adult males can have a body length of only 2 to 5 mm, while the females are from 7 to 10 mm in length.
The females is more heavy-bodied and does not wander around. It can live up to a maximum of 600 days.
Mating takes place mainly in June, and the female does not show any aggressive behaviour as female spiders usually do. It lay their eggs in two to four silk cocoon it weaves. These can contain from as little as ten eggs to over 400 in each cocoon and they usually hatch after one month from being laid.
The crab spider, especially the young ones, may also feed on pollen or nectar when their prey is not abundant.
One can meet such crab spiders along the Chadwick Lakes trail, if one has a watchful eye and looks at the wayside flowers in lowland vegetation. It is common in the Maltese islands.
