Phidippus clarus - BugGuide.Net

I'll second Don's comment

and the pictures are done well also. The variations you get down there are bewildering. You must be down river from a nuclear power plant. :-)

How the heck are you able to identify some of these oddballs? I have a tough time when the easy keys are invisible. (like that P. princ*ps I showed you)

… Jay Barnes, 13 June, 2007 - 4:35pm

Thanks

Jay and Don.
This probably isn't much help, but when you've seen one, you've seen them all. There are unique morphological differences with phids.
I have seen hundreds of clarus in the field, with size and color variation from one extreme to the other, some of which are documented on the guide.

For example, male regius were once believed to be audax. Before Don and I had seen and collected audax, we often collected early instar male and female regius in hopes they were audax. Although GB had described the differences to us before the revision was available, it was hard for us to tell until I actually found an audax. I knew right away it was an audax. After that, the differences were obvious, and we have not confused the two since.

… Jeff Hollenbeck, 13 June, 2007 - 8:02pm

Good, so you're not superhuman :-)

That's actually very helpful, not to mention encouraging. It mirrors my own slowly increasing ability to identify some of the less-flashy Little Brown Jobs piling up in Dendryphantinae.

… Jay Barnes, 14 June, 2007 - 3:37pm

How Nice

I don't believe I'll ever see a more beautiful female clarus than this one. It reminds me of a cardinalis, but obviously isn't. Nice work!

… Don Cadle, 11 June, 2007 - 2:29pm