January 15, 2018

Welcome to Jumping Spiders of Africa

Kindly add your Salticidae observations to the project, especially if they are tightly cropped, clear images that show some detail. An estimate of body length is always useful, if available. Notes on the substrate and habitat are helpful too.

Don't worry about the ID too much.
We'll deal with that on an ongoing basis. New species of jumping spiders are found at an impressive rate, and photographs are now often included in scholarly articles.

The classification schemes for Salticidae are a bit confusing at the moment. Hence, using subfamilies and tribes are presently not helpful in the iNat context. We'll try to establish a genus and if lucky, the species. If you are interested in the debate, check out the two schemes that are on the table in 2018. Both papers contain many photographs of live specimens:

Prószyński, J. 2017. Pragmatic Classification of The World's Salticidae (Araneae).
Free PDF 20MB: https://biotaxa.org/em/article/download/33084/29352

Maddison W.P. 2015. A phylogenetic classification of jumping spiders (Araneae: Salticidae)
Free PDF 13MB: http://www.americanarachnology.org/JoA_free/JoA_v43_n3/arac-43-03-231.pdf

It is often said that identifying spiders by photographs is difficult and unreliable. That might be so but we can make a small contribution to citizen science here by trying to bridge the gap, where possible, between scientific records and photographs of live specimens.

Posted on January 15, 2018 01:00 PM by wynand_uys wynand_uys | 3 comments | Leave a comment

Archives