Biologist Jürgen Otto and colleagues have named two species of the extraordinarily colourful dancing spiders

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

It is only a few millimetres in size, performs a dance as part of a courtship ritual and has striking coloured markings on its back that “look like a pharaoh’s headdress”.

But when biologist Jürgen Otto first spotted the peacock spider species he has named Maratus unicup, he didn’t immediately recognise how special it was.

“I didn’t think much of it because I’m partially colour blind,” he says. “But there was quite a reaction to photographs of it on the internet, with people saying it’s beautiful.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Maratus Unicup, which was discovered by Jurgen Otto in October 2017. Photograph: Jurgen Otto

Maratus unicup is one of two new peacock spider species Otto and his colleague David Hill have named in a new paper published in the international spider journal Peckhamia.

Otto discovered the spider near Lake Unicup in Western Australia last year. He said the new species was notable for its courtship display in which the male dances – swinging its abdomen from side to side – while the female watches from a close distance.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Maratus tortus, which was discovered by David Knowles in 1994. Photograph: Jurgen Otto

The second species they have named Maratus tortus and was discovered by environmental consultant and educator David Knowles in 1994 near Walpole in WA.



Knowles and Otto have returned to the site several times and were finally able to capture specimens of the spider last year.

Knowles had originally nicknamed the species “hokey pokey” because of the male’s curious twisting dance.

“There’s no other peacock spider that has this kind of a display,” Otto said. “It looks almost like a Spanish bullfight, where the female is the bull and the male is the bullfighter.”

In the new paper, Otto and Hill say there are now 70 species of peacock spiders, the majority of which have been named by them during the past seven years.

Otto publishes images and videos of the spiders he finds on his website and on his Facebook and YouTube pages. Most of the spiders are found in WA or south-eastern Australia. But they can be elusive.

“I tend to find them less common in bright sunshine. The best times of the day are in the morning and afternoon,” he said.



