Bold Jumping Spider in Whitmore Lake
On July 9, 2020, we were visiting Sandy’s brother and sister-in-law at Whitmore Lake (downstate Michigan). While sitting out on their deck, I noticed this large jumping spider running around my feet, so of course I had to try to get pictures.
She was about the size of my little fingernail, which is pretty big for a jumping spider. She also had iridescent green chelicerae (mouthparts) that she kept flashing at me.
There are only a few large jumping spiders found in Michigan that have the green chelicerae, and I think this one is a Bold Jumping Spider, Phidippus audax. Bold jumpers are highly variable in coloration and patterning, but one of the common forms is black with three prominent white dots on the abdomen, like this one has.
The name “Bold Jumping Spider” is well earned. While on the one hand she would only stay still for a few seconds at a time, on the other hand she showed no particular fear of me, sometimes rearing up as if she was ready to attack.
Also, I hadn’t noticed while taking the pictures, but now that I look more closely we can see that she is missing her right front leg.
Unfortunately, this was all done with my TG-3 “travel camera”, which isn’t quite as good as my big DSLR with the macro lens. In particular, I was having a lot of depth-of-field issues, with only parts of her being in focus at any one time. So, I decided to try using the focus-stacking feature of the camera to try to get an extended depth-of-field shot (a feature that I normally only use on things that either don’t move at all, like mushrooms, or only move slowly, like beetles). Unfortunately, as I was taking the shots, that was when she decided that enough was enough and disappeared through a crack in the deck. Leaving me with this “action shot” where she appears to have way too many legs and just kind of “leak” through the deck.
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I love the tutu effect from the row of hairs around her midriff.
Great shots with the secondary camera. Very expressive!