319. Western Flattened Jumper

Our latest jumping spider, a Salticid, was discovered in it's natural habitat, the butter dish.  Platycryptus californicus is found in south western BC and south to Mexico through the western USA (see iNaturalist observations below). I went looking to find out more about their natural habitat and had to look no further than Sean McCann's great blog, "Ibycter" to discover it is lab walls!  Hmm. I guess one can infer that they are fine around human habitation. Do make sure that you do click on the link to go to Sean's blog where you can see fun video of P. californicus leaping in slow motion. The lighter chevron leaf-ish pattern on the abdomen was one of the diagnostic features that I used for identification.  

Pause here for an iNaturalist plug.

​Not only have the wonderful naturalists on iNaturalist entered enough records to provide a range map, but the community also helped confirm the identification of this species after the AI gave this as a suggestion. 

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