Pantropical Jumping Spiders Occurring In Florida

Jumping spiders, or salticids, are so named because they have a highly coordinated jumping ability with which they capture prey and traverse from plant to plant. Their sense of sight is extraordinary for invertebrates; they can see in color (DeVoe, 1975), and the large front eyes focus on objects (Land, 1972). Many are marked with contrasting colors or bands, especially the males who display this ornamentation while dancing before females to win acceptance for mating. Jumping spiders as adults may be as small as 1 mm in length or as large as 23 mm, but most are 5-10 mm. All jumping spiders are harmless to humans, although the larger species can give a locally painful bite if roughly handled.

Two species of jumping spiders occurring in Florida, Menemerus bivittatus (Dufour) and Plexippus paykulli (Audouin), have been imported by man from the tropical Old World. Both are almost exclusively associated with man-made structures, usually buildings where they may be numerous around lights at night, catching the insects attracted to the lights. Both are medium-large jumping spiders, about 8-12 mm in length. Adults and immatures of both species are present all year, although most mating and reproduction begin in the fall and continue until spring. Both are found from Florida to Texas and south to Paraguay. Menemerus bivittatus also occurs in California, and both species are widely distributed in the Old World tropics. The occurrence of dense populations of these 2 species around human habitations makes them of considerable beneficial importance in the control of flies, mosquitoes, and other human pests. At the same time, since they do not build webs to capture prey, they do not create the cobwebs which so often annoy many housewives.