Purple harvestman (Vonones ornata), a North American cosmetid (6815135479)

Description:

Taken with my iPhone; please excuse the poor quality* For better photos not taken with my iPhone, see: www.flickr.com/photos/31867959@N04/6863674742/in/photostr... This is Vonones ornata, a species of harvestmen arachnid (not a spider, it belongs to Opiliones, not Araneae) belonging to the family Cosmetidae. I was particularly excited about finding this individual (which I found in a dead piece of wood near the edge of a small lake at the Red River Refuge in Bossier City, LA), because most harvestmen in the southeast US belong to the suborder Eupnoi and are the typical, bland 'daddy longlegs' type harvestmen. Cosmetids are much more interesting. They are the second most diverse family of harvestmen with about 700 described species, most of which live in South and Central America, but as you can see, a few species can be found in the southern portions of North America. This species is not quite as exciting as the highly ornate*, decorated, spikey, vibrantly patterned species in the neotropics, but it's still pretty neat. You can see the yellow lines across the body, and these are actually florescent under UV light (see video link at bottom). Like all cosmetids, they have a derived set of grasping pedipalps that cling tightly to the chelicerae. this species was still ornate enough for the scientist who originally described it to name it "ornata." In fact, Cosmetidae itself derives from the Greek kosmetos, which means 'ornate.' 'Vonones' is apparently the name that belonged to a number of Indo-Iranian kings during the late BC to early AD time periods... I'm not sure how harvestmen are relevant to them quite yet. You can see that this individual dropped a leg, its left number one. This is a common defense mechanism for harvestmen, analogous to a gecko's tail drop. It probably occurred when I was violently trying to capture it in my excitement to show it to our animal behavior class (this was a class trip focused on observing animals in the wild. A few moments before this we found a carrion beetle orgy inside the body of a dead alligator gar).
Vonones ornata florescing under a UV light (plus juveniles): www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=aIgzu...!