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The recently published book "A Guide to the Spiders of Australia" by Framenau and Baehr and Zborowski (2014, Reed New Holland)(ISBN: 9781 92151 724 2) is a useful guide to the 79 families of spiders found in Australia, going miles beyond the typical simplified spider identification book.
This work has the following things to say about Peacock Spiders. Here I have summarized their discussion : :
Peacock Spiders are part of the family Salticidae, that is, the Jumping Spiders.
This family of spiders use visual cues for foraging and mating, facilitated by the excellent vision of their large anterior median eyes. The spiders in this family can perceive depth, an ability that they need in order to judge how far they have to jump to attack their prey; these spiders mostly ambush their prey during the day. Normally, a spider in the family Salticidae has 8 eyes in all.
Jumping spiders are notably sexually dimorphic, with the males often being much more colourful than the females. Within Salticidae, the genus Maratus contains 36 described species of Peacock Spiders.
Male peacock spiders are usually extremely colourful, coming in a wide variety of colours. The males have abdominal flaps which they spread when courting female peacock spiders..... in order to make their abdomen seem bigger, thus amplifying the signal provided by the very colourful abdomen of the male. In other words, the males look pretty in order to attract the females (!) ......
it is very possible that the female compares the colouration of the various available males when she makes a choice of mate, surveying and comparing the various potential mates. (This is a pattern we also see in birds)
Last edited by madbadgalaxyman; 06-03-2015 at 07:23 AM.
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