Over the past several years, I have really come to enjoy watching the jumping spiders in my garden and, of course, while wandering through wadis. The Pantropical Jumping Spider (Plexippus paykulli) is one of the more common – and dramatically-colored – ones that I can see close to home.
I was not surprised, then, to learn that this species is often associated with buildings and man-made structures and may be found near light sources.
Both sexes of this species have a high carapace (upper section of the cephalothorax, the front part of the body where the legs are attached) and are covered in short grayish hairs.
Males, pictured above, have a black carapace and abdomen with a broad white stripe running through the center. There are also broad white stripes along the sides and a pair of white spots towards the rear end of the abdomen. The face appears to have three white stripes, which you can see clearly in the close-up photo below.
Immature spiders, as well as females like the one pictured below, are brownish-gray in color with a broad tan stripe through the center of the carapace and abdomen. Towards the end of the abdomen, the stripe breaks into chevrons, v-shaped marks.
Like all jumping spiders in the family Salticidae, Pantropical Jumping Spiders have incredibly acute eyesight. They have four pairs of eyes, with the middle pair in the front quite a bit larger than the others.
These jumping spiders do not spin webs. Instead they use their silk to build ‘retreats’ in high-up places where they can rest safely when not hunting. Once they have spotted potential prey with those amazing eyes of theirs, the spiders go into stealth mode and approach, leaping only when they are close enough, but not before attaching a dragline. And these spiders can jump! They can cover many times their body length in a single leap.
These aptly-named spiders will pounce on and eat flies, bugs, bees and wasps, butterflies, dragonflies, grasshoppers and other spiders. They can reportedly kill prey that is twice their size. They do this by first injecting the prey with venom and then overpowering them by brute force while the prey is still mobile.