Phidippus californicus
Encyclopedia
Phidippus californicus is a species of jumping spider
. It is found in the southwestern
USA (Arizona
, New Mexico
, Nevada
, Texas
, Utah
and northern Mexico
(Baja California peninsula
, and Sonora
).
desert. These large jumping spiders are found on bushes such as the sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata
), the rabbitbrush (Chrysothamnus
nauseosus), and the Four-winged Saltbrush (Atriplex canescens
). P. californicus prefers bushes that grow on slopes with thin, stony soils, and appears to avoid conifers and moist habitats (e.g., the proximity of irrigation ditches). In the same habitat, often on the same bush, two other Phidippus species are found: P. apacheanus and P. octopunctatus
.
, a black cephalothorax
and limbs, and a bright red abdomen
with a median black stripe (similar to the female P. johnsoni
). Between the black and red areas on the posterior part of the dorsal abdomen there are two minute white spots. At the sides of the abdomen there are light diagonal bands, and there is also a light transverse anterior band on the dorsum. These markings vary in conspicuousness: the bands and spots may be only a somewhat lighter shade of red than the remainder of the abdomen, while the median black stripe may be so reduced in width and length that the abdomen appears solid red. Sometimes, the basic color is orange rather than red, and very old spiders may even be yellow. In this species, the adult males and the adult females are similar in coloration, and this is also true of P. apacheanus. It is more usual for the males of Phidippus to have iridescent chelicerae and a distinctive adult coloration while the females of this genus remain similar to the immature spiders (e.g., P. clarus
, P. octopunctatus, P. whitmani
).
It is one of the species of jumping spiders which are mimics of mutillid wasps
in the genus Dasymutilla
(commonly known as "velvet ants"); several species of these wasps are similar in size and coloration, and possess a very painful sting.http://www.arachnology.org/ISA/meetings/1998ISAabs.htm
From the second instar on, the spiderlings have a brownish-gray cephaIothorax and limbs, and a red abdomen with markings limited to the posterior portion. These consist of a pair of black stripes, each bearing two conspicuous white dots, separated by a light region. The light region may be gray, white, or even golden; immediately anterior to the black stripes it is enlarged into a conspicuous light dot. While the abdomen of very young spiderlings appears bronze, the red color of the abdomen is striking in later instars. In one of the later instars, the 5th or perhaps the 6th, a red cap appears in the eye region, but this marking disappears in the following molt. The light basal band and side bands of the adult are also present in immature spiders, and, in the two instars proceeding maturity, the chelicerae are also iridescent.
It builds a retreat, consisting of a slightly flattened tube of silk, surrounded by guy-lines that attach it to the twigs or leaves of the bush. Molting and breeding nests are similar, but use much more silk. These are found under stones at the base of the bush.
When a male and an unmated female meet, it takes about 30–60 seconds of courtship until mating occurs. Males have been observed to initially court females laden with eggs, females from different Phidippus species, or even simples models out of clay with a pair of wires as appendages. Previously mated females may retreat, or attack the male as prey.
Raising the forelegs and holding the abdomen to one side are by no means specific to courtship. This display occurs to a wide variety of objects that are approaching too close to the spider: other spiders - regardless of sex, houseflies or other large prey, models of prey that are about the size of the spider, such as 9–12 mm spheres, or even the end of a finger or a pencil. In these situations, however, the spider with its forelegs raised and waving backs off while facing the moving object and, when 5–8 cm away, turns away and flees.
In intraspecific encounters, the effect of raising the forelegs is to bring the other spider to an abrupt halt, whether it be a wandering conspecific, a courting male preparing to touch the female, or a female stalking or about to jump at the male. Indeed, raising of the forelegs appears to have this 'stop-sign' effect even in encounters between congenerics of the three Phidippus species. Drees, working with female Salticus scenicus, was able to initiate hunting behavior by moving a black dot along a white wall, and to stop the pursuing spider by moving wires projecting from the side of the model through an angle that imitated the waving of the forelegs.
Female P. californicus and P. apacheanus are unusual in that they perform an acceptance dance just before the male touches them. With forelegs high and wide apart and abdomen bent to the side, the female sways before the male, sometimes with a few steps to one side and then the other. In other Phidippus species, the female rejects the male by extending the first pair of legs whenever he approaches too closely, and merely fails to ward him off when she is ready to accept him.
Immature males require about half an hour to digest a fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster
), while individuals 1 cm long need less than 9 minutes. To consume a house fly (Musca domestica), even large adult females need almost one hour. The hungrier a spider, the longer will it take to digest the prey. If hungry, they will readily capture more than one prey at a time, if it comes very near. Satiated spiders will respond to prey by extending the forelegs towards it.
Jumping spider
The jumping spider family contains more than 500 described genera and about 5,000 described species, making it the largest family of spiders with about 13% of all species. Jumping spiders have some of the best vision among invertebrates and use it in courtship, hunting and navigation...
. It is found in the southwestern
Southwestern United States
The Southwestern United States is a region defined in different ways by different sources. Broad definitions include nearly a quarter of the United States, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah...
USA (Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
, New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
, Nevada
Nevada
Nevada is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. With an area of and a population of about 2.7 million, it is the 7th-largest and 35th-most populous state. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which contains its...
, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, Utah
Utah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
and northern Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
(Baja California peninsula
Baja California Peninsula
The Baja California peninsula , is a peninsula in northwestern Mexico. Its land mass separates the Pacific Ocean from the Gulf of California. The Peninsula extends from Mexicali, Baja California in the north to Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur in the south.The total area of the Baja California...
, and Sonora
Sonora
Sonora officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sonora is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 72 municipalities; the capital city is Hermosillo....
).
Habitat
P. californicus occurs in the sagebrush community of the Great BasinGreat Basin
The Great Basin is the largest area of contiguous endorheic watersheds in North America and is noted for its arid conditions and Basin and Range topography that varies from the North American low point at Badwater Basin to the highest point of the contiguous United States, less than away at the...
desert. These large jumping spiders are found on bushes such as the sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata
Artemisia tridentata
Artemisia tridentata is a shrub or small tree from the family Asteraceae. Some botanists treat it in the segregate genus Seriphidium, as S. tridentatum W. A. Weber, but this is not widely followed...
), the rabbitbrush (Chrysothamnus
Chrysothamnus
Chrysothamnus is a member of the plant family Asteraceae. It is a semi-deciduous shrub, sometimes also called sagebrush. The native distribution is in the arid western United States and northern Mexico...
nauseosus), and the Four-winged Saltbrush (Atriplex canescens
Atriplex canescens
Atriplex canescens, Chamiso, Chamiza, Four wing saltbush, Four-wing saltbush, and Fourwing saltbush, is a species of evergreen shrub in the Amaranthaceae family, which is native to the western and mid-western United States....
). P. californicus prefers bushes that grow on slopes with thin, stony soils, and appears to avoid conifers and moist habitats (e.g., the proximity of irrigation ditches). In the same habitat, often on the same bush, two other Phidippus species are found: P. apacheanus and P. octopunctatus
Phidippus octopunctatus
Phidippus octopunctatus is a jumping spider that occurs in the USA and Mexico, mostly in the Great Basin Desert. It is among the largest jumping spiders found in North America, approaching 25 mm in body length...
.
Description
Females can reach 12 mm body length, males 7 to 11 mm. Both sexes have blue-green iridescent cheliceraeChelicerae
The chelicerae are mouthparts of the Chelicerata, an arthropod subphylum that includes arachnids, Merostomata , and Pycnogonida . Chelicerae are pointed appendages which are used to grasp food, and are found in place of the chewing mandibles most other arthropods have...
, a black cephalothorax
Cephalothorax
The cephalothorax is a tagma of various arthropods, comprising the head and the thorax fused together, as distinct from the abdomen behind. The word cephalothorax is derived from the Greek words for head and thorax...
and limbs, and a bright red abdomen
Abdomen
In vertebrates such as mammals the abdomen constitutes the part of the body between the thorax and pelvis. The region enclosed by the abdomen is termed the abdominal cavity...
with a median black stripe (similar to the female P. johnsoni
Phidippus johnsoni
The red-backed jumping spider is one of the largest and most commonly encountered jumping spiders of western North America. It is not to be confused with the unrelated and highly venomous redback spider...
). Between the black and red areas on the posterior part of the dorsal abdomen there are two minute white spots. At the sides of the abdomen there are light diagonal bands, and there is also a light transverse anterior band on the dorsum. These markings vary in conspicuousness: the bands and spots may be only a somewhat lighter shade of red than the remainder of the abdomen, while the median black stripe may be so reduced in width and length that the abdomen appears solid red. Sometimes, the basic color is orange rather than red, and very old spiders may even be yellow. In this species, the adult males and the adult females are similar in coloration, and this is also true of P. apacheanus. It is more usual for the males of Phidippus to have iridescent chelicerae and a distinctive adult coloration while the females of this genus remain similar to the immature spiders (e.g., P. clarus
Phidippus clarus
Phidippus clarus is a species of jumping spider found in old fields throughout eastern North America. It often waits upside down near the top of a plant, which may be useful for detecting prey, and then quickly jumps down before the prey can escape...
, P. octopunctatus, P. whitmani
Phidippus whitmani
Phidippus whitmani is a species of jumping spider.-Description:While the male is strikingly red on top, with a black band in the frontal eye region and sometimes with white setae on the forelegs, the female is of a rather inconspicuous brown color...
).
It is one of the species of jumping spiders which are mimics of mutillid wasps
Mutillidae
Mutillidae are a family of more than 3,000 species of wasp whose wingless females resemble ants. Their common name velvet ant refers to their dense pile of hair which most often is bright scarlet or orange but may also be black, white, silver, or gold. Their bright colours serve as aposematic signals...
in the genus Dasymutilla
Dasymutilla
The genus Dasymutilla belongs to the Mutillidae family. The females of the genus are well known for their painful sting, which is where many gain their common name, Cow Killer. The female is wingless and often resemble large ants while the males still retain their wings. The larva of the...
(commonly known as "velvet ants"); several species of these wasps are similar in size and coloration, and possess a very painful sting.http://www.arachnology.org/ISA/meetings/1998ISAabs.htm
From the second instar on, the spiderlings have a brownish-gray cephaIothorax and limbs, and a red abdomen with markings limited to the posterior portion. These consist of a pair of black stripes, each bearing two conspicuous white dots, separated by a light region. The light region may be gray, white, or even golden; immediately anterior to the black stripes it is enlarged into a conspicuous light dot. While the abdomen of very young spiderlings appears bronze, the red color of the abdomen is striking in later instars. In one of the later instars, the 5th or perhaps the 6th, a red cap appears in the eye region, but this marking disappears in the following molt. The light basal band and side bands of the adult are also present in immature spiders, and, in the two instars proceeding maturity, the chelicerae are also iridescent.
Behavior
P. californicus is active from mid-morning until dusk, and can be seen in bushes running along branches or poised near their tips. Running is interrupted frequently: the spider stops, turns to one side and then the other, apparently scanning its surroundings.It builds a retreat, consisting of a slightly flattened tube of silk, surrounded by guy-lines that attach it to the twigs or leaves of the bush. Molting and breeding nests are similar, but use much more silk. These are found under stones at the base of the bush.
When a male and an unmated female meet, it takes about 30–60 seconds of courtship until mating occurs. Males have been observed to initially court females laden with eggs, females from different Phidippus species, or even simples models out of clay with a pair of wires as appendages. Previously mated females may retreat, or attack the male as prey.
Courtship
Male courtship display is similar to that of P. apacheanus, P. clarus, or P. octopunctatus. The male begins his display by holding the carapace very high, shifting the abdomen to one side, and raising the first pair of legs. In this position, he moves before the female, stopping after each few steps. The male advances in a zig-zag pathway, shifting his abdomen to the other side at the end of each oblique approach. Throughout, the dancing male flicks his forelegs up and down, holding them wide apart at first and bringing them closer and closer together as he nears the female. Then, with forelegs held almost parallel before him, he touches the female cautiously once or twice. If the female remains still at this stage, the male climbs over her, and uses the forelegs to help turn her abdomen to the side. When the genital pore, which lies on the ventral abdomen, is thus exposed, the male inserts his palpus. After 2-3 min., the male withdraws this pedipalp, turns the female's abdomen in the other direction, and inserts the other pedipalp.Raising the forelegs and holding the abdomen to one side are by no means specific to courtship. This display occurs to a wide variety of objects that are approaching too close to the spider: other spiders - regardless of sex, houseflies or other large prey, models of prey that are about the size of the spider, such as 9–12 mm spheres, or even the end of a finger or a pencil. In these situations, however, the spider with its forelegs raised and waving backs off while facing the moving object and, when 5–8 cm away, turns away and flees.
In intraspecific encounters, the effect of raising the forelegs is to bring the other spider to an abrupt halt, whether it be a wandering conspecific, a courting male preparing to touch the female, or a female stalking or about to jump at the male. Indeed, raising of the forelegs appears to have this 'stop-sign' effect even in encounters between congenerics of the three Phidippus species. Drees, working with female Salticus scenicus, was able to initiate hunting behavior by moving a black dot along a white wall, and to stop the pursuing spider by moving wires projecting from the side of the model through an angle that imitated the waving of the forelegs.
Female P. californicus and P. apacheanus are unusual in that they perform an acceptance dance just before the male touches them. With forelegs high and wide apart and abdomen bent to the side, the female sways before the male, sometimes with a few steps to one side and then the other. In other Phidippus species, the female rejects the male by extending the first pair of legs whenever he approaches too closely, and merely fails to ward him off when she is ready to accept him.
Hunting
The spider seldom initiates hunting behavior to still prey, and interrupts ongoing hunting behavior when the prey ceases to move. When pursuing a prey, it at first moves rapidly, slowing down as it comes near the prey. Within 5 cm of the prey, it presses its body close to the ground and draws the legs in toward the body. At about 1.5 cm, it becomes still in this crouched position, attaches a safety thread to the ground, and jumps at the prey. When attacking large prey, it may take a curved course in order to jump on it from behind.Immature males require about half an hour to digest a fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster
Drosophila melanogaster
Drosophila melanogaster is a species of Diptera, or the order of flies, in the family Drosophilidae. The species is known generally as the common fruit fly or vinegar fly. Starting from Charles W...
), while individuals 1 cm long need less than 9 minutes. To consume a house fly (Musca domestica), even large adult females need almost one hour. The hungrier a spider, the longer will it take to digest the prey. If hungry, they will readily capture more than one prey at a time, if it comes very near. Satiated spiders will respond to prey by extending the forelegs towards it.