Talavera aequipes

Talavera aequipes
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Arachnida
Order: Araneae
Suborder: Araneomorphae
Family: Salticidae
Subfamily: Euophryinae
Genus: Talavera
Species: T. aequipes
Binomial name
Talavera aequipes
(O. P-Cambridge, 1871)
Synonyms
  • Salticus aequipes
  • Attus aequipes
  • Euophrys aequipes

Talavera aequipes is a small jumping spider that is found in Eurasia. It is very hard to distinguish from several very similar species, but is the most frequent of these spiders in Central Europe. It is small enough to reside comfortably in snail shells of down to 5 mm length during winter, where they also lay their eggs. Sometimes it shares a larger shell with Pellenes tripunctatus, where T. aequipes lives deep inside, and P. tripunctatus is found in the larger opening.

Appearance

Males only reach a body size of two mm, females up to 3 millimetres (0.12 in). The body is covered with brown to yellowish hairs, with striped legs. The female has yellow palps, the male has a yellow mask.

Distribution

The species is widely distributed in Europe, but is also found up to Eastern Siberia. It lives mostly on dry meadows.

Name

The species name is Latin for "equal feet".

Subspecies

The subspecies Talavera aequipes ludio (Simon, 1871) occurs only on Corsica. Earlier synonyms are:

References

Further reading

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, March 06, 2014. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.