Plexippus paykulli is a jumping spider in the family Salticidae. It is native to south east Asia but has spread to other parts of the world. In the United States it is called the pantropical jumping spider. It is usually associated with buildings and may be found near light sources catching insects attracted by the light.

Distribution

Plexippus paykulli is cosmopolitan

Cosmopolitan distribution

In biogeography, a taxon is said to have a cosmopolitan distribution if its range extends across all or most of the world in appropriate habitats. For instance, the killer whale has a cosmopolitan distribution, extending over most of the world's oceans. Other examples include humans, the lichen...

 in distribution. It has been reported from tropical regions of Africa and Asia. In the American continent it was introduced to Florida and also occurs in Texas, extending as far south as Paraguay.

Description

Spiders in this species are robust, with a high carapace

Carapace

A carapace is a dorsal section of the exoskeleton or shell in a number of animal groups, including arthropods such as crustaceans and arachnids, as well as vertebrates such as turtles and tortoises. In turtles and tortoises, the underside is called the plastron.-Crustaceans:In crustaceans, the...

, and are covered with short greyish hairs. They are about ten millimetres long, the female being slightly larger than the male. The sexes are easy to tell apart as the males have a black carapace and 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 broad white central stripe, another broad white stripe on either side and a pair of white spots near the posterior end of the abdomen. The stripe continues between the anterior eyes so that the face appears to have three white stripes on a black background. The female is brownish grey, the carapace being darker especially around the eyes, with a broad tan stripe that extends onto the abdomen where it breaks into two chevrons. There are two white spots on either side of the posterior end of the abdomen. Immature spiders resemble the females.

Biology

Plexippus paykulli is generally found living in and around man-made structures, in particular inside buildings, although it has also been recorded from citrus groves and cotton fields. The female creates an eggsac about three centimetres in diameter in a concealed location under floorboards, in a crack or under the eaves. In this a lens-shaped silken case is made into which 35 to 60 eggs are deposited. The female guards these until the spiderlings emerge and disperse some three to four weeks later.

This spider does not spin a web but builds a silken retreat in an elevated position such as the edge of the ceiling from which it makes hunting forays. It has very acute eyesight and approaches its target prey stealthily, leaping on it when close enough to do so. Prey species that have been recorded as being part of the diet include Diptera

Fly

True flies are insects of the order Diptera . They possess a pair of wings on the mesothorax and a pair of halteres, derived from the hind wings, on the metathorax...

, Homoptera

Homoptera

Homoptera is a deprecated suborder of order Hemiptera; recent morphological studies and DNA analysis strongly suggests that the order is paraphyletic. It was therefore split into the suborders Sternorrhyncha, Auchenorrhyncha, and Coleorrhyncha....

, Hymenoptera

Hymenoptera

Hymenoptera is one of the largest orders of insects, comprising the sawflies, wasps, bees and ants. There are over 130,000 recognized species, with many more remaining to be described. The name refers to the heavy wings of the insects, and is derived from the Ancient Greek ὑμήν : membrane and...

, Lepidoptera

Lepidoptera

Lepidoptera is a large order of insects that includes moths and butterflies . It is one of the most widespread and widely recognizable insect orders in the world, encompassing moths and the three superfamilies of butterflies, skipper butterflies, and moth-butterflies...

, Odonata

Odonata

Odonata is an order of insects, encompassing dragonflies and damselflies . The word dragonfly is also sometimes used to refer to all Odonata, but the back-formation odonate is a more correct English name for the group as a whole...

, Orthoptera

Orthoptera

Orthoptera is an order of insects with paurometabolous or incomplete metamorphosis, including the grasshoppers, crickets and locusts.Many insects in this order produce sound by rubbing their wings against each other or their legs, the wings or legs containing rows of corrugated bumps...

 and Aranea. In one study, these spiders hunted and consumed individuals of sixteen species of arthropod

Arthropod

An arthropod is an invertebrate animal having an exoskeleton , a segmented body, and jointed appendages. Arthropods are members of the phylum Arthropoda , and include the insects, arachnids, crustaceans, and others...

s from fourteen families and six orders. They are reported as being a predator of mosquito

Mosquito

Mosquitoes are members of a family of nematocerid flies: the Culicidae . The word Mosquito is from the Spanish and Portuguese for little fly...

es in African houses, and of insect pests in India and Bangladesh. They are highly agile and can cover many times their own body length in a single jump. In a building where the only available prey were German cockroach

German cockroach

The German cockroach is a small species of cockroach, measuring about to long; however, they are known to get bigger. It can be tan through brown to almost black, and has two dark parallel streaks running from the head to the base of the wings. Although it has wings, it is unable to sustain flight...

es, Blatella germanica, the spiders not only survived but also bred on this monophagous diet. They are able to successfully kill prey twice their own size. Large arthropods are injected with venom

Venom

Venom is the general term referring to any variety of toxins used by certain types of animals that inject it into their victims by the means of a bite or a sting...

but are usually overpowered by brute strength before the venom has immobilized them. There have been records of the prey flying, jumping or running away with the spider clinging to it until the victim was eventually overpowered. A study investigated the way in which these spiders stalked their prey. It was found that a mobile prey like a fly was stalked in a different manner to an immobile one such as a maggot. On a camouflaged background, the spider approached with greater stealth and jumped from a shorter distance to attack a mobile prey. This gave the spider a greater likelihood of a successful outcome without prior detection.

External links

• Plexippus paykulli at Worldwide database of jumping spiders
• Plexippus paykulli at Global Species Database of Salticidae (Araneae)
• Plexippus paykulli at Salticidae: Diagnostic Drawings Library
• Plexippus paykulli at Bugguide.net