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Photo#161808
BG1244 C8379 - Zygoballus rufipes - female

BG1244 C8379 - Zygoballus rufipes - Female
Gloster, Gloster Arboretum, Amite County, Mississippi, USA
April 29, 2007
Size: body length 4.6 mm.
This appears to be a female_Zygoballus.
Proper placement would be appreciated.
Gayle

Images of this individual: tag all
BG1244 C8379 - Zygoballus rufipes - female BG1244 C8379 - Zygoballus rufipes - female BG1244 C8379 - Zygoballus rufipes - female BG1244 C8379 - Zygoballus rufipes - female

Moved
Moved from Jumping Spiders.

Yes, rufipes.

These females can be difficult to distinguish from nervosus in full-body photos like this without some practice. Pretty simple if you have an adult spider laying in alcohol with oblique lighting though, because you can easily see the S-shaped ducts leading away from the epigynal openings without having to dissect:

From this view, nervosus looks so different it's hard to believe they are even in the same subfamily.

 
...
After reading your description of how you typically shoot these guys alive and then release, I should add that you can substitute water for the alcohol noted above and you probably needn't submerge the spider completely.

More important is to control the light source and direction so that little/no light strikes the exposed surface of the epigynum. A transmitted light arrangement would work perfectly. I use a dual fiber-optic light guide with both strands laying horizontal to the specimen and focusing lenses to maintain some sort of control over the light output.

BTW, I don't know what else you're doing to your images lately, but the recent lighting improvement is very noticable. The softer light is bringing out a lot of detail.

Zygoballus bettini
I'd say its a good match for this species. The angle of the carapace behind the lateral pair of eyes is certainly consistant with Zygoballus.

 
Z_bettini
This appears to be a synonym of Z_rufipes.
Should I place it under Z_rufipes?
Gayle

 
You
should probably wait for Jay to take a look.

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