Salticidae Sunday RSS

Species found in rain forests are fascinating. They are unique, colorful, and sometimes intimidating. In this edition of Salticidae Sunday, we are going to focus on a jumper that has been falsely accused of being one of those intimidating and dangerous species found in the rain forest.     Kingdom  Anamalia  Phylum  Arthropod  Subphylum  Chelicerata  Class  Arachnida  Order  Araneae  Infraorder  Araneomorphae  Family  Salticidae  Genus  Telamonia  Species  T. dimidiata     Identification:  There are so many colorful species of jumping spider that it shouldn’t be surprising when I say the Telamonia genus in general is colorful with different variables ranging between all the species and gender. One thing they do...

Yes, we live in Utah (United States) which makes this post close to home, even though this particular species lives in a land far, far away. Today, I’m going to talk about the Mopsus mormon. The M. mormon was posted in a few jumping spider groups on Facebook and we figured it was a good feature for Salticidae Sunday.     Kingdom  Anamalia  Phylum  Arthropod  Subphylum  Chelicerata  Class  Arachnida  Order  Araneae  Infraorder  Araneomorphae  Family  Salticidae  Genus  Mopsus  Species  M. mormon     The M. mormon is not the first species to be given the species or genus of mormon. In the entomology world, species ranging from the jumping spider to primates have been given that...

This blog has spent quite a bit of time focusing on the Phiddipus, so I figured it was time to do a different genus for our Salticidae Sunday post. I’d like to introduce the Platycryptus californicus.     Kingdom  Anamalia  Phylum  Arthropod  Subphylum  Chelicerata  Class  Arachnida  Order  Araneae  Infraorder  Araneomorphae  Family  Salticidae  Genus  Platycryptus   Species  P. californicus    You may recognize these little guys if you are in Northern and Central America. We happen to see them EVERYWHERE. They are fun to watch, and are great for keeping the smaller bugs down in our yard. We don’t sell them, but we have several in our house plants. In fact, there...

Today I want to give a huge shout out to Phantastic Phids for our awesome P. putnami. It’s like they read my mind. I have been wanting to find one of these guys for a little while. I’m so excited to write this one!    Kingdom  Anamalia  Phylum  Arthropod  Subphylum  Chelicerata  Class  Arachnida  Order  Araneae  Infraorder  Araneomorphae  Family  Salticidae  Genus  Phidippus  Species  P. putnami    Physical features  One of the reasons I love the putnami is their coloring and unique face. In the right light, their eyes look hollow and almost eerie. So cool to see them up close. Our little guy has dark blue coloring and looks particularly fuzzy around the...

  Kingdom  Anamalia  Phylum  Arthropod  Subphylum  Chelicerata  Class  Arachnida  Order  Araneae  Infraorder  Araneomorphae  Family  Salticidae  Genus  Phidippus  Species  octopunctatus     As promised earlier this week, today’s Salticidae Sunday will focus on the P. octopunctatus. We have nicknamed these sassy little creatures the octopunk, and they are truly an interesting species of jumping spider. Also, their mating dance was the funniest I have seen. More on that later though.    Identification  The octopunk is one of the largest jumping spiders in North America and can get up to 25 mm in length which makes them larger than the regal. Of course, it’s only by a few mm, but still. I fell in love...