Jumping spider
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Jumping spiders Fossil range: Cretaceous[1] - present |
||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 An adult female Phidippus mystaceus jumping spider.
|
||||||||||||||
| Scientific classification | ||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
| Diversity | ||||||||||||||
| 553 genera, 5025 species | ||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||
| Subfamilies | ||||||||||||||
|
Aelurillinae |
The jumping spider family (Salticidae) contains more than 500 described genera and over 5,000 species, making it the largest family of spiders with about 13% of all species (Peng et al., 2002). Jumping spiders have good vision and use it for hunting and navigating. They are capable of jumping from place to place, secured by a silk tether. Both their book lungs and the tracheal system are well-developed, as they depend on both systems (bimodal breathing).
Contents |
[edit] Habitat
Jumping spiders live in a variety of habitats. Tropical forests harbor the most species, but they are also found in temperate forests, scrub lands, deserts, intertidal zones, and even mountains. Euophrys omnisuperstes is a species reported to have been collected at the highest elevation, on the slopes of Mount Everest (Wanless, 1975).
Jumping spiders are generally recognized by their eye pattern.
[edit] Behavior
Jumping spiders are generally diurnal, active hunters. Their well developed internal hydraulic system extends their limbs by altering the pressure of body fluid (blood) within them. This enables the spiders to jump without having large muscular legs like a grasshopper. The jumping spider can jump 20 to 60 or even 75 to 80 times the length of its body. When a jumping spider is moving from place to place, and especially just before it jumps, it tethers a filament of silk to whatever it is standing on. Should it fall for one reason or another, it climbs back up the silk tether. Jumping spiders are Scopula bearing spiders, which means that they have a very interesting Tarsal section. At the end of each leg they have hundreds of tiny hairs, which each then split into hundreds more tiny hairs, each tipped with an "end foot". These thousands of tiny feet allow them to climb up and across virtually any terrain. They can even climb up glass by gripping onto the tiny imperfections, usually an impossible task for any spider.
Jumping spiders also use their silk to weave small tent-like dwellings where females can protect their eggs, and which also serve as a shelter while moulting.
Jumping spiders are known for their curiosity. If approached by a human hand, instead of scuttling away to safety as most spiders do, the jumping spider will usually leap and turn to face the hand. Further approach may result in the spider jumping backwards while still eyeing the hand. The tiny creature will even raise its forelimbs and hold its ground.It might even jump on the hand! Because of this contrast to other arachnids, the jumping spider is regarded as inquisitive as it is seemingly interested in whatever approaches it.[2]
[edit] Vision
Jumping spiders have very good vision centered in their anterior median eyes (AME). Their eyes are able to create a focused image on the retina, which has up to four layers of receptor cells in it (Harland & Jackson, 2000). Physiological experiments have shown that they may have up to four different kinds of receptor cells, with different absorption spectra, giving them the possibility of up to tetrachromatic color vision, with sensitivity extending into the ultraviolet range. It seems that all salticids, regardless of whether they have two, three, or four kinds of color receptors, are highly sensitive to UV light (Peaslee & Wilson, 1989). Some species (for example, Cosmophasis umbratica) are highly dimorphic in the UV spectrum, suggesting a role in sexual signaling (Lim & Li, 2005). Color discrimination has been demonstrated in behavioral experiments.
The principal eyes have high resolution (11 min. visual angle) [2], but the field of vision is narrow, from 2 to 5 degrees.
[edit] Hunting
Jumping spiders are active hunters, which means that they do not rely on a web to catch their prey. Instead, these spiders stalk their prey. They use their superior eyesight to distinguish and track their intended meals, often for several inches. Then, they pounce, giving the insect little to no time to react before succumbing to the spider's venom.
[edit] Nectar and pollen
Even if there are no spiders that are pure herbivores, there are some jumping spiders which include nectar and pollen in their diet (Jackson et al., 2001) and one species is sometimes predominantly a herbivore. So far none are known to feed on seeds. Plants such as the partridge pea offer the jumping spiders nectar through extrafloral nectaries, and in return the spiders help to protect the plant by killing and eating insects that might damage it.
Spider species Bagheera kiplingi, a species of jumping spiders, whose dietary habits were first discovered in 2001 and further detailed in 2008, obtains about 97% of its food from plant matter stolen from ants that co-exist with acacia trees in Latin America.[3]
[edit] Gliding
At least one species of jumping spiders, known as the Gliding Spider (Maratus volans) from Australia, has an abdomen with two wing-like flaps that can be tucked underneath it when not in use. A common urban myth is the belief that when the spider is leaping, it can use its flaps to extend the jump and glide short distances through the air. However, this belief has been debunked by the Australasian Arachnological Society.[4][5]
[edit] Reproduction
Jumping spiders use their vision in complex visual courtship displays. Males are often quite different in appearance than females and may have plumose hairs, colored or metallic hairs, front leg fringes, structures on other legs, and other, often bizarre, modifications. These are used in visual courtship in which the colored or metallic parts of the body are displayed and complex sideling, vibrational, or zigzag movements are performed in a courtship "dance". A 2008 study of Phintella vittatain in Current Biology suggested that female spiders reacted to the male reflecting ultraviolet B light before mating, a finding that challenges the previously held assumption that animals did not register ultraviolet B light.[6] In recent years it has been discovered that many jumping spiders may have auditory signals as well, with amplified sounds produced by the males sounding like buzzes or drum rolls.[7]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
 |
This section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this section if you can. (March 2009) |
- ^ Grimaldi,D.A. et al. Fossiliferous Cretaceous Amber from Myanmar (Burma): Its Rediscovery, Biotic Diversity, and Paleontological Significance. American Museum Novitates, No 3361, 2002
- ^ [1]
- ^ Science News, "Vegetarian Spider"
- ^ [www.australasian-arachnology.org/myths/maratus_cannot_fly]
- ^ [www.australasian-arachnology.org/download/Maratus_cannot_fly.pdf]
- ^ Rebecca Morelle, " Study sheds light on spider sex", BBC News, 2 May 2008.
- ^ Damian O. Elias et al. "Seismic signals in a courting male jumping spider" (retrieved 11 July 2008)
- Kaston, B.J. (1953). How to Know the Spiders, Dubuque, Iowa.
- Crompton, J. (1954). The Life of the Spider. Mentor.
- Wanless, F.R. (1975). Spiders of the family Salticidae from the upper slopes of Everest and Makalu. Bull. Br. arachnol. Soc. 3: 132-136.
- Forster, L.M. (1982). Vision and prey-catching strategies in jumping spiders. American Scientist 70: 165-175.
- Jackson, R.R. (1982). The behavior of communicating in jumping spiders (Salticidae). In P. Witt and J. Rovner (eds).Spider Communication Mechanisms and Ecological Significance, p. 213-247. Princeton, New Jersey.
- Peaslee, A.G. & Wilson, G. (1989). Spectral sensitivity in jumping spiders (Araneae, Salticidae). Journal of Comparative Physiology A 164: 359-363.
- Richman, D.B. & Jackson, R.R. (1992). A review of the ethology of jumping spiders (Araneae, Salticidae). Bulletin of the British Arachnological Society, 933-37.
- Jackman, John A. (1997). A Field Guide to Spiders & Scorpions of Texas. Gulf Publishing Company. Houston, Texas. p.127.
- Harland, D.P & Jackson, R.R. (2000). 'Eight-legged cats' and how they see - a review of recent research on jumping spiders (Araneae: Salticidae). Cimbebasia 16: 231-240 PDF
- Nakamura, T. & Yamashita, S. (2000). Learning and discrimination of colored papers in jumping spiders (Araneae, Salticidae). Journal of Comparative Physiology A 186: 897-201.
- Jackson, R.R., Nelson, X., Pollard, S.D., Edwards, G.B. & Barrion, A.T (2001). Jumping spiders (Araneae: Salticidae) that feed on nectar. J. Zool. Lond. 255: 25-29. PDF
- Michael Rhode(1983) Professor of Zoology at Oxford
- Peng, X.-J., Tso, I-M. and Li, S.-Q. (2002). Five New and Four Newly Recorded Species of Jumping Spiders from Taiwan (Araneae: Salticidae). Zoological Studies 41(1): 1-12.
- Elias, D.O., Mason, A.C., Maddison, W.P. & Hoy, R.R. (2003). Seismic signals in a courting male jumping spider (Araneae: Salticidae). Journal of Experimental Biology 206: 4029-4039.
- Lim, M.L.M. & Li, D. (2005). Extreme ultraviolet sexual dimorphism in jumping spiders (Araneae: Salticidae). Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 89: 397-406. doi:10.1111/j.1095-8312.2006.00704.x
- Richman, D.B., Edwards, G.B. & Cutler, B. (2005). Salticidae. pp.205–216 in D. Ubick, P. Paquin, P. E. Cushing, and V. Roth (eds.) Spiders of North America: an identification manual. American Arachnological Society.
- Wesołowska, W. & Haddad, Ch.R. 2009. Jumping spiders (Araneae: Salticidae) of the Ndumo Game Reserve, Maputaland, South Africa. African Invertebrates 50 (1): 13-103.[3]
[edit] External links
 |
Wikispecies has information related to: Salticidae |
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Salticidae |
- Comprehensive resource on the morphology and taxonomy of jumping spiders (Salticidae): www.jumping-spiders.com
- Global Species Database of Salticidae
- Video of a jumping spider's mating behavior
- World Spider Catalog
- Bimodal breathing in jumping spiders: morphometric partitioning of the lungs and tracheae in Salticus scenicus (Arachnida, Araneae, Salticidae).
- Jumping Spiders of the World
- Jumping Spiders of NW-Europe
- Jumping spiders of Australia
- Jumping spiders of Wisconsin
- Generic key to the West-African salticid genera (PDF, Hungarian/English)
- Movies of Habronattus courtship behavior
- Male jumping spider courtship dance with contact microphone picking up and amplifying sounds
- regal jumping spider on the UF / IFAS Featured Creatures Web site
- Menemerus bivittatus on the UF / IFAS Featured Creatures Web site
- Plexippus paykulli on the UF / IFAS Featured Creatures Web site
