Bold Jumping Spider

Diet

Jumping Spiders are active predators, and although some spiders will take pre-killed meals, most must be fed live insects! For babies, this means flightless fruit flies, which can include the smaller wingless Drosophila melanogaster or the larger winged Drosophila hydei. As they get bigger, babies can be weaned onto small mealworms or crickets, while adults can be fed large mealworms, large crickets, roaches, and larger flies! Jumping spiders are incredibly capable hunters and can hunt prey many times their own size, but we recommend supervising feeding when using any particularly large feeder insect. Feeding frequency is often dependent on the spider, with some individuals preferring to hunt more often while others prefer to fast between meals. Regardless, larger prey (the same size of the spider or larger) will last your spider longer, while smaller prey (smaller than the size of the spider) must be fed more often. Exceptionally large meals many times the size of the spider can keep it satisfied for weeks!

There are a couple of ways to keep your jumper hydrated. The simplest way to provide water is to spray the side of the enclosure every few days, leaving water droplets for the spider to drink from. Due to their anatomy, spiders do not do well with getting wet - therefore, we heavily recommend spraying away from your spider, and never getting your spider too wet. Another good way to provide water is with a little reservoir - you can fill a small test tube, jar, or centrifuge tube with water and plug it with cotton, and it will both serve as a source of water and a source of humidity! We recommend changing the water once a week if it does not fully dry out, as well as replacing the cotton.

Do not attempt to use an open reservoir of water, like a water bowl! Jumping spiders do not drink from standing pools of water as they will from water droplets or damp surfaces, and any large source of water may be a drowning risk!

Housing

Jumping spiders typically prefer lower humidity, as they often live in drier conditions in the wild. Bold jumpers are very widespread in North America and do exist in regions with higher humidity, but for the most part they seem to prefer conditions with a decent balance - not too wet, not too dry. Humidity can be supplied to any jumping spider by a plugged reservoir of water, or by the occasional misting. Although jumpers typically prefer lower humidity levels, heightening the humidity can be important for specific stages in your jumpers' life - see below, under behavior. 

For the enclosures themselves, we recommend a habitat that is around 4 x 4 x 7 inches for an adult. Younger spiders can be kept in deli cups or lidded solo cups, flipped upside down so the lid is on the bottom. If you do this, make sure you provide ventilation! 

An easily available option for an adult's enclosure is a small Zilla Micro Habitat. This is what we often use and recommend for our own adult spiders. There are many other options to choose from, including making your own!

Although it's possible to keep bold jumpers in a planted environment, it's important to ensure that their habitats are not kept too damp. If you wish to keep a bold jumper in a bioactive setup (that is, a planted habitat that functions as a small self-cleaning ecosystem running on your spider's waste), it's important to choose plants and other inhabitants that would prefer a jumper's less-humid preferences!

Behavior

Most jumping spiders are solitary animals, and should never be kept together as older juveniles or adults. Although they will typically avoid hunting another of their own species, a hungry spider can and will kill a sibling or partner, so please never mix spiders (even courting pairs) unless well-fed and supervised!

Jumping spiders do not make true webs, but they will make little silken hammocks to sleep in. We recommend adding small hides for them to nest in along the top of the enclosure - for this, we use folded pieces of toilet paper tube! Jumpers also leave behind a dragline of silk wherever they go, which functions as a safety line if they ever fall or miss a jump. This dragline can begin to accumulate as your jumper explores its home, so we recommend removing it once in a while! 

All arthropods molt, and jumping spiders go through an arduous process known as premolt. When a spider is well-fed, healthy, and old enough, it will make an opaque, thick silk hammock, oftentimes much larger than normal. If this happens, we recommend raising humidity in the enclosure (though not by too much), and we recommend that any feedings are halted until the spider emerges once more. Spraying water near or around the hammock is also helpful, so the spider can drink without venturing too far from its premolt hammock.

If all goes well, your spider will emerge both larger and more brightly colored! Sometimes mismolts may occur, but if humidity is maintained it is rare for any issue to be greater than a missing leg or palp (which regrows in the next molt). This process will continue until the spider is an adult, where it will never molt again.

Adult spiders can be sexed through several means, though not as straightforwardly as in regals. Males will have prominent 'bulbs' on their palps, which are the two leg-like appendages that attach to their face. Females, on the other hand, have a palp that more closely resembles a fuzzy mitten than a bulb, with more stout proportions overall. Besides this, males and females have similar patterns, with the only difference being that the black colors on males are slightly darker and more prominent. The females, like in other spiders, are generally larger and stronger than the males, so a heavier and less boldly-colored individual is more likely to be a female than a lanky, darker-colored individual.