Salticidae

Wayne Maddison *

The Jumping Spiders

     ================================= Lyssomaninae 
     |
     |================================ Spartaeinae 
     |
     |              ================== Amycinae 
     |        ======|
     |        |     ================== Thiodininae 
     |        |
     |        |======================= Hisponinae 
     |        |
     |        |     ================== Synemosyninae 
     |        |=====|
     |        |     ================== Hyetussinae 
     |        |
     |        |        =============== Sitticinae 
     |        |        |
     |        |        |============== Plexippinae 
<<===|        |        |
     |        |        |============== Pelleninae 
     ====(a)==|        |
              |        |     ========= Heliophaninae 
              |        |=====|
              |        |     ========= Salticinae 
              |        |
              ====(b)==|============== Misc. fixed embolus 
                       |
                       |        ====== Dendryphantinae 
                       |        |
                       |        |===== Euophryinae 
                       |        |
                       ====(c)==|===== Synagelinae 
                                |
                                |===== Ballinae 
                                |
                                ====== Misc. free embolus 

Partial classification of salticids based on Maddison (1988, 1996)

Containing clade(s): Dionycha

Table of Contents

An Introduction to the Jumping Spiders

Salticid faunas of geographical areas

Characters delimiting the Salticidae

Discussion of Phylogenetic Relationships

Express routes

Sources of Information on the Internet

References

An Introduction to the Jumping Spiders

Jumping spiders (Salticidae) are easily distinguished from other spiders by their four big eyes on the face and four smaller eyes on top of the head. Around the world there are probably more than 5000 species of jumping spiders.

Jumping spiders are charming spiders that look up and watch you. Their excellent vision allows them to hunt much as do cats, spotting prey from long distances, creeping up then pouncing using their jumping ability. Although a jumping spider can jump more than fifty times its body length, none of its legs has enlarged muscles. The power for jumping probably comes from a quick contraction of muscles in the front part of the body increasing the blood pressure, which causes the legs to extend rapidly much as in the toy frogs that hop when you squeeze a bulb.

Their vision also allows communications by visual means, such as the elaborate courtship dances that males perform.

Salticids are perhaps as old and diverse as mammals, though not many humans know their world. Many salticids are colorful, they take on a variety of body forms, and some have disguises, looking like ants and other organisms. The bright colors and elaborate forms of some jumping spider species are involved in courtship.

If you'd like to learn more about jumping spiders, you can follow the phylogenetic tree above to explore the diversity of species. You might also want to wander through a gallery of jumping spider images and movies, explore their anatomy, or focus on the jumping spiders of America north of Mexico.

Salticid faunas of geographical areas

By navigating along the tree above, you can wander through jumping spider diversity throughout the world (although, at present, the coverage is highly biased towards New World salticids). Guides or overviews to the salticid faunas of the following restricted geographical areas are available:

America North of Mexico	Ecuador, South America

Characters delimiting the Salticidae

The monophyly of the family Salticidae is best supported by the peculiar eye structure yielding excellent vision and corresponding vision-based behavior. In particular, the AME are enlarged and tube shaped, with the retina strip-shaped and tiered (Scheuring, 1914; Land, 1969, Blest and Sigmund, 1984). Each of these features may be cited as a synapomorphy uniting the salticids. The fully-developed system of eye muscles described by Scheuring (1914) appears unique to salticids, though eye muscles are inadequately studied among salticids and spiders as a whole. Study of the eye muscles of thomisids and clubionids could be particularly important in establishing a sister group to salticids. The complex branching of the intestinal diverticula over the brain of salticids (Millot, 1931) may also delimit the family, though there have not been studies of the diverticula of lyssomanines, whose narrower ocular area may not accommodate complex diverticula.

Discussion of Phylogenetic Relationships

The phylogeny of salticids is poorly resolved. What is shown above is provisional and incomplete, based on the work of Maddison (1988, 1996).

Of the branches shown here, the best supported clade is the Salticine Division (a). Some synapomorphies for the Salticine Division are: (1) Short, anteriorly placed fovea (Wanless, 1984); (2) Small posterior median eyes (Wanless, 1984); (3) Cell bodies of anterior lateral eye photoreceptors displaced to side (Blest, 1983); (4) AME retinal strip sharply curved (Blest and Sigmund, 1984); (5) Six arms of pigmented glia surround secondary eye photoreceptors, as opposed to 4 or less in Lyssomanes and the spartaeines (Eakin and Brandenburger, 1971; Blest and Sigmund, 1984). Maddison (1988, 1996) added the following additional synapomorphies: (6.) Absence (or great reduction) of tarsal claw on female palpus; (7.) Gnathocoxal gland openings displaced medially; (8.) Posterior tarsal claws with far fewer teeth than anterior; (9.) Accumulation of slit sense organs and associated seta on a mound on the medial edge of the basal segment of the chelicerae; (10.) Intercheliceral sclerite small.

The unidentates (b) form a group recognized by Simon that may retain validity, if fissidents are included as a variant. The dendryphantines, euophryines and several smaller subfamilies make up the "free-embolus" group (c), which have a movable embolus separated from the tegulum by an inflatable hematodocha, and an embolus that curls counterclockwise from origin to tip in the left palpus ventral view.

Express routes

The salticid section of the Tree of Life is most completely developed in the following areas:

• Habronattus: A remarkable genus whose males are elaborately colored and ornamented. You will find videos of their courtship behavior.
• Pelegrina: Some of the illustrations and diagnoses from the monograph of Pelegrina (Maddison, 1996) are shown here.

Sources of Information on the Internet

Proszynski's Catalogue of Salticidae This catalogue is a complete taxonomic catalogue of salticids as of early 1995. It also includes an extensive references section.

References

Proszynski's Catalogue has many more salticid references.

Blest A.D. 1983. Ultrastructure of secondary retinae of primitive 
          and advanced jumping spiders (Araneae, Salticidae). 
          Zoomorphology, 102 (2): 125-141.
Blest, A. D. and C. Sigmund. 1984.  Retinal mosaics of the principal 
          eyes of two primitive jumping spiders, Yaginumanis 
          and Lyssomanes: clues to the evolution of Salticid 
          vision. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 
          B 221: 111-125.
Eakin, R. M. and J. L. Brandenburger. 1971.  Fine structure of 
          the eyes of jumping spiders.  Journal of Ultrastructure 
          Research 37: 616-663.
Land, M. F. 1969.  Structure of the retinae of the principal 
          eyes of jumping spiders (Salticidae:  Dendryphantinae) 
          in relation to visual optics.  Journal of Experimental 
          Biology 51: 443-470.
Maddison, W.P. 1988.  A revision of jumping spider species groups 
          formerly placed in the genus Metaphidippus, with a 
          discussion of salticid phylogeny (Araneae).  PhD. thesis, 
          Harvard University.
Maddison, W.P.  1996. Pelegrina Franganillo and other jumping 
          spiders formerly placed in the genus Metaphidippus 
          (Araneae: Salticidae).  Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative 
          Zoology.  l54(4): 215-368.
Millot, J. 1931.  Les diverticules intestinaux du cephalothorax 
          chez les araignees vraies. Zeitschrift für Morphologie 
          und Ökologie de Tiere 21: 740-764.
Scheuring, L. 1914.  Die Augen der Arachnoideen. II. Zool. Jahrb., 
          Anat. 37: 369-464.
Wanless, F.R. 1984.  A review of the spider subfamily Spartaeinae 
          nom. n. (Araneae: Salticidae) with descriptions of 
          six new genera.  Bull. Br. Mus. nat. Hist. (Zool.) 
          46(2): 135-205.

About this page

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Wayne Maddison
E-mail: [email protected].
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721 USA

Page copyright © 1995 W. Maddison
First online November 1994
Last modified 18 March 1996
This page has been accessed times since 27 December 1995.

Title Illustration

This is an apparently undescribed species of Habronattus, near H. hirsutus, from California.

Images and text on this page and other pages in the salticid section of the Tree of Life are © copyright 1994-1995 W. Maddison unless otherwise noted, and are not to be used without permission.