March 19, 2012

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Spiders in Borneo: Dreaming about salticid spiders

By Wayne Maddison

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This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American

If you've read my previous posts, you know that "Salticidae" is the formal scientific name for jumping spiders. The purpose of this post is to admit that, yes, I dream about salticids.

Any of us who seeks to explore biodiversity in poorly known areas brings with us our field clothes, our collecting equipment, and our dreams of what we might find. Yes, we hope to find something special. But what?

Coming to Borneo, I dream of these jumping spiders: Depreissia, a bizarre ant-like beast that may occupy an important place in the salticid evolutionary tree. Eupoa, a tiny salticid that does indeed have a special place in the evolutionary tree, but we need more specimens to figure out exactly where. Mantisatta, a long narrow spider looking like a blade of grass. Onomastus, a translucent ghost of a salticid.

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Now, in these brief descriptions I don't explain fully why these would be so cool to find. If you were a jumping spider geek you'd nod your head and know why I am excited about the possibility of seeing them. If we do find them, I'll be sure to tell you all about them.

Then there's the possibility of finding something that's so new I can't even anticipate it. I don't lay awake at night thinking about this, but I do daydream.

But I don't want to leave you with the impression that the other spiders are disappointing. In our first few days here at Mulu we have seen many species. Not only will the specimens provide important information to us, but some may represent species new to science, and all are beautiful to look at. Here are a few we've found.

The first is the slightly scary looking Epeus, a male with great big eyes, and a red tuft of hairs on the top of its head:

Next is a female Epeus, possibly the same species as the male, but she is a delicate gold:

Finally, a strange jumping spider, Myrmarachne, that looks like an ant. This is a male. Sticking out from the front of his face are his hugely enlarged jaws, the tips of which are swollen into bulbs. When he's walking around, those bulbs look just like an ant's head:

Sometimes I can hardly believe the creatures that are on Earth.

Previously in this series:

Spiders in Borneo: Introduction

Spiders in Borneo: Undiscovered biodiversity

Spiders in Borneo: The guests of honor: Salticidae

Spiders in Borneo: Team Salticid

Spiders in Borneo: Mulu National Park

Text and images © W. Maddison, under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license (CC-BY)

Wayne Maddison is a biologist who studies the diversity and evolution of jumping spiders. When he was thirteen years old in Canada, a big jumping spider looked up at him with her big dark eyes, and he's been hooked ever since. Jumping spiders hunt like cats, creeping and pouncing, and the males perform amazing dances to females. His fascination with the many species of jumping spiders led to an interest in their evolutionary relationships, and then to methods for analyzing evolutionary history. He received a PhD from Harvard University. He is now a Professor at the University of British Columbia, and the Scientific Director of the Beaty Biodiversity Museum. He has taken it as his mission to travel to poorly known rainforests to document the many still-unknown species before they are gone, and to study them and preserve them in museums for future generations.

More by Wayne Maddison

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