March 20, 2012

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Spiders in Borneo: Jumping spiders in the forest

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

We know that the familiar big animals like lions or polar bears specialize on large terrains of habitat like African savannahs or Arctic ice, but perhaps most people don't realize that smaller creatures specialize at a much smaller scale. To a small spider, a tree trunk is a vast expanse of habitat. There are species of jumping spider that live only on tree trunks, while others live only on the leaves of bushes and trees.

This means that to find a diversity of spider species, you have to think at their scale. If you've already collected on tree trunks with rough bark, try the smooth trunks covered with moss -- maybe a different species lives there. What about those epiphytic plants growing on the tree branches? They are big enough to hold tiny spiders. Vertical surfaces, horizontal surfaces; moist, dry; decomposing, fresh -- each small piece of a forest can provide different living conditions that might just suit a different species. A forest is hundreds of habitats for spiders.

Previously in this series:

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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

Spiders in Borneo: Dreaming about salticid spiders

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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