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Spiders in Borneo: The spiders who wouldn't be

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


With the field work done, our attention turns to handling all of the specimens. We have barely had time to glance at most of them. My curiosity to peruse them under a microscope is strong, as I want to figure out what we got, but that will have to wait until after we get home to the lab in Canada. Indeed, it will have to wait longer than that, as it will take weeks to properly sort and label the specimens. Patience, Wayne.

In the meantime, there is the preparation of the specimens for the flight home. After we catch the specimens, we preserve them that day in 95% ethanol. Traditionally spiders were preserved in 80% ethanol, which is better for studying their body structures (95% makes them brittle and prone to break), but 95% is much better for preserving DNA for modern phylogenetic analysis. Ethanol of that percentage is flammable and a problem to take on airplanes, which means that our primary preparation for travel is to drain the ethanol from the hundreds of vials. The specimens stay just wet enough to stay in good condition, and we'll refill the ethanol right after arriving home.

Going through the vials, draining each one, gives me time to recall some of the amazing species we found. Some, strangely, look and act as if they were something other than jumping spiders. I have posted photos of some of the ant-like salticids already, but I want to show you one more. This is Agorius, a jumping spider that has its body constricted is several places, like extra waists. This makes its body appear to be divided like an ant's body. It also holds its first legs up as if they were an ant's antennae.


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Some spiders look like beetles. Here's one we haven't yet identified, though we think it is near Ligurra and Simaetha. She's got a stout body with a blue sheen, and she holds up her second pair of legs, perhaps to appear as antennae. Alex suggested she looks like a weevil, with the front legs held like the snout projecting in front of the antennae.

But perhaps the most surprising is Orsima. Back in the 1970's, Jonathan Reiskind described its peculiar appearance and behavior: he noted that the back end of the spider looks like the head of an insect. The abdomen has a constriction, as if the neck of the insect, while the spinnerets --the little appendages spiders use to make silk -- are held and jiggled as if they were the antennae and mouthparts of the insect's head. The spider raises and lowers the abdomen rhythmically, and all in all it's rather hypnotic to watch.

Now, I'm sure that natural selection led these salticids to appear to be things other than salticids. But, in my opinion, salticids look just fine as salticids.

Previously in this series:

Spiders in Borneo: Introduction

Spiders in Borneo: Undiscovered biodiversity

Spiders in Borneo: The guests of honor: Salticidae

Spiders in Borneo: Team Salticid

Spiders in Borneo: Mulu National Park

Spiders in Borneo: Dreaming about salticid spiders

Spiders in Borneo: Jumping spiders in the forest

Spiders in Borneo: Beating around the bushes

Spiders in Borneo: Spiders in leaf litter

Spiders in Borneo: A Vertical Life

Spiders in Borneo: Leeches and eyeballs

Spiders in Borneo: Breaking News!

Spiders in Borneo: Falling from above

Spiders in Borneo: What I carry

Spiders in Borneo: Entangled and pierced

Spiders in Borneo: Scattered literature

Spiders in Borneo: Mulu wrap-up

Spiders in Borneo: Lambir Hills

Spiders in Borneo: Replaying the Tape of Life

Spiders in Borneo: More Hispo at Lambir

Spiders in Borneo: Geometrical Jumping spiders

Spiders in Borneo: Trees that grow from sky to ground

Text and images © W. Maddison, under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license (CC-BY)

Wayne Maddison is a biologist who studies the diversity and evolution of jumping spiders. When he was thirteen years old in Canada, a big jumping spider looked up at him with her big dark eyes, and he's been hooked ever since. Jumping spiders hunt like cats, creeping and pouncing, and the males perform amazing dances to females. His fascination with the many species of jumping spiders led to an interest in their evolutionary relationships, and then to methods for analyzing evolutionary history. He received a PhD from Harvard University. He is now a Professor at the University of British Columbia, and the Scientific Director of the Beaty Biodiversity Museum. He has taken it as his mission to travel to poorly known rainforests to document the many still-unknown species before they are gone, and to study them and preserve them in museums for future generations.

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