I was scouting around our Crepe Myrtle tree when suddenly something jumped onto a leaf in front of me. Looking closer, I saw to my delight that it was a jumping spider! You know by now how much I love them, so you can understand my eagerness to identify this specimen. The gray-white-black color scheme, with spots on the abdomen and stripes on the legs, quickly pointed me to
Pelegrina galathea, the Peppered Jumper. I believe this one is a female. She belongs to the subfamily
Dendryphantinae (along with
Hentzia and
Phidippus). Like other jumpers I've photographed, she was pretty obliging, but only on the condition I keep up with her while she hunted. In some of the photos you can see the silk tether she used on a jump. Aren't her markings exquisite? And those eyes, how can you resist them?
References:
http://bugguide.net/node/view/2027
http://tolweb.org/Pelegrina_galathea/5044
http://salticidae.org/salticid/diagnost/pelegrin/galathea.htm
http://www.jumping-spiders.com/php/tax_drawings.php?id=2750
http://archive.org/search.php?query=mediatype%3Amovies%20AND%20subject%3A%22Pelegrina%20galathea%22 (videos)
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