Helpis minitabunda (L. Koch 1880) Threatening Jumping Spider

Helpis minitabunda is found on foliage in most habitats in Eastern Australia, also in New Guinea and New Zealand. Often abundant in gardens. Like most jumping spiders it is very agile and fast, seemingly confident in its ability to jump to safety. When approached it will either rear up and watch you carefully or scuttle to the other side of the leaf, then if you turn the leaf the other way it may run to the other side and hide again or sometimes stay still to watch you, swivelling its eyes, or even jump onto the camera. Helpis minatabunda is superficially similar to some Opisthoncus species, though more slender and usually with less hairy legs and palps. They are also very similar to Cytaea severa but Helpis minitabunda has much longer legs. The male is most often photographed, being very distinctive, with a flattish caput covered with white or cream, very large protruding chelicerae, and white rings around legs I and II above the metatarsi. The abdomen is long and genly tapering, whitish on top. The sides of both the cephalothorax and the abdomen are dark brown. The legs are very long, legs I and II especially so. The female looks as though she is wearing wraparound subglasses of the type that have see-through sections on the sides. She is more cryptic than the male, with orange to brown blotches and patterns, often very clear or translucent legs, projecting eyes framed with short tubes of hairs, and a shape on the abdomen within the margins usually with some dark figures in about the centre of the abdomen on each side. Fully grown females also have white leg rings. Named by Koch in 1880 as Astia minitabunda. Spiders remaining in the genus Astia are also similar. The Latin species name minitabunda means threatening.