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Photo#131634
Habronattus pugillis - male

Habronattus pugillis - Male
Madera Canyon, Santa Rita Mts., Santa Cruz County, Arizona, USA
July 20, 2007
Size: 5 mm
This is the Santa Rita Mountains form of Habronattus pugillis. Most of the sky island mountain ranges of southeastern AZ have an isolated population of these spiders in oak woodland at middle elevations, as the dry desert lowlands are unsuitable habitat. Each population is slowly diverging from the others. See here and here.

Anyway, this is a new species for the guide. The habitat was a steep, rocky hillside with scattered oak/juniper.

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Habronattus pugillis - male Habronattus pugillis - male Habronattus pugillis - male Habronattus pugillis - male Habronattus pugillis - male Habronattus pugillis - male

Many thanks -- most interesti
Many thanks -- most interesting to see speciation at work. Do you know whether Maddison tried to interbreed them? It would seem that with the variations in courtship behavior that a complete divergence is almost guaranteed.

 
Literature
There have been a fair number of papers published on this spiders in the past 10 years or so. A Google Scholar search for Habronattus pugillis returns a good number of the papers mentioned, many of which are free access.

I believe they did courtship experiments to see whether they recognized other types as potential mates. As I recall, females preferred foreign males from other populations over the local males.

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