Jumping spiders!

[DekuScrub]

so, i find two adult jumping spiders in my house today. i would have left them in here if we were having a fly problem but it isn't quite warm enough out. when i was younger and we had guinea pigs there were always flies near the cages and for one summer we had a resident jumping spider i named peter parker

so for their well being i took them outside and tried feeding each of them a cricket. the black and green one ate his and the brown one ignored hers....well thats my question anyone know if jumping spiders are sexually dimorphic? or did i just randomly have two separate species in my house?

the brown one climbed out of his/her cup and started circling the bottom of the cup the other one was in, the other one lifteded his/her front legs in a threatening posture and the other ran away. but it did seem interested in the other one until the threat posture was displayed....so im thinking the brown one may have been a male and the black one a female, just becuase id assume a female wouldnt actively seek a mate where as a male would.

but im not any sort of entomologist. if theyre male and female im like two seconds from pairing them up and making babies. i just dont want them to eat one another.

this is what the black one looked like

 

[camimom]

how big is it?

i know nothing, im just curious.

and where do you live that you get jumping spiders?

 

[DekuScrub]

im in Pennsylvania, south east, like 15 min from center city, Philly if i speed and theres no traffic. they normally arent all over the place but you see them consistently through the warm months.

they are so friggin cute. its gotta be because the head is larger than the abdomen. and their big stupid eyes. im cool with spiders that have proportions like tarantulas or wold spiders. but the ones with the HUGE butts, or abdomens still a bit skeevy. i wouldnt handle those.

apparently these ones with the green fangs or mandibles are quite common because i did an image search and there are many photos of this one in particular.

 

[JonRich]

Well what you have pictured is Phidippus audax. From what i remember they both have similar adult coloring (aside from the males being smaller and having tufts of "hair" over their eyes.)

The brown one may be a juvenile. Was It spotted at all?

Do you have any actual pix of both?

 

[Cainschams]

I usually feed off spiders but I never do the jumping spiders. They are so damn cool!!!! Sorry, cant help on the sexes

 

[JonRich]

The one you have pictured is a Male.

 

[kinyonga]

I love daring jumping spiders! Haven't seen one in my house for a while now though....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phidippus_audax

JonRich...how do you tell a male from a female daring jumping spider??

 

[ijmccollum]

What JonRich said. I currently am housing one in a small critter keeper. One of my fave domestic spiders. Saved this winter from living in the mail box and potentially getting squashed by the mail. My hubbie say I should just turn him loose in the basement, I doubt he'd say that about my other spiders.

 

[JonRich]

I love daring jumping spiders! Haven't seen one in my house for a while now though....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phidippus_audax

JonRich...how do you tell a male from a female daring jumping spider??

I went to school at SUNY Cobleskill. It's a Aggie school. In the summer we would get a ton of Bold Jumpers. The males have a tuft of hair over the eyes. If you look at the pic posted by the OP , you can see the "spikes" of hair above his eye. The females lack this.

 

[kinyonga]

Thanks for the explanation! I'll have to look at the next one that turns up in my house carefully!

 

[DekuScrub]

thanks for the link but that makes it awefully confusing, i wish i had kept them so i could have taken pictures. if i recall correctly the brown one had a couple of white marking on the abdomen and legs but not like the brown one. it was also a tad bigger and had a more inflated abdomen as if it had recently eaten.

according to the wiki it dosnt sound like theyre dimorphic, so it was either a differnt species, subspecies (or SEPA locale, lol) or maybe it had just recently gone through a molt.