Salticidae (sal-TISS-id-dee) Overview
With so many people coming to us asking about jumping spiders, we wanted to dedicate one day a week to look at all the different species of jumpers (aka Salticidae). We are dubbing this Saltididae Sunday. All species of jumping spiders have similarities in many ways, but they all have their unique traits that give them their names. We are not experts in this area, but we wanted to create a place where we can all learn together. So, with that said our first look is into the Saltididae family itself.
In many of the groups we belong to, there are some common jumpers we talk about. However, there are a lot more that we don't mention. In fact, there are currently 635 genus and 6,080 species that we know about. With only one species a week, it is going to take a while to get through all of them, but we will do our best. First thing is first though, what exactly do all these scientific classifications mean?
Scientific classifications are basically set up like a family tree where each group expands to incorporate everything in that group. Scientifically, all living species are included in a kingdom, phylum, subphylum, class, order, infraorder, family, genus, and species. For those scientists and/or entomology experts, please be kind. I'm learning here. But I am ALWAYS willing to learn and correct any errors, so please speak up.
For the average non-sciency person like myself, don't get overwhelmed. I have posted a sample below and hope it is easy to understand. And no, I'm not going to include all the species in this post, I don't have that kind of time, and I don't think any of you would be super interested in reading through all that right now anyway. So, I'll save all of us the added effort and just give a brief overview of what the sciency stuff looks like.
Whew, that chart was a lot more work than I thought it would be! I was going to add more to this, but my brain is done for the day. Time to go play with my spoods. Next week I think I'll focus on a specific species. What species would you like to learn about?
References:
http://haileyedwards.net/extras/bonus-content/araneae-pronunciation-key/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_spider
1 comment
This is a really great article hunni, thank you for sharing.