Spider ID. Any suggestions gratefully received.

[Geoff F]

In my garden yesterday. At first I thought it was a large ant; then I counted the legs. The leaf on which it is sitting is 15mm wide. Well marked, so I thought this might be an easy one, but I've checked all my reference material and I'm still stumped. Found a few similar but nothing totally matched.

Never realised there are so many small black spiders.

[No.9 Spider]

Well it's a Salticidae species - Jumping spider.

I'd say Heliophanus species.

No.9 Spider

[Geoff F]

Thanks for that. I had thought Jumping spider from the head on view but was put off by the ant like abdomen with the two white spots. But after a quick check on Salticidae species I see that Heliophanus flavipes female is a good candidate here.

I will look at this in more detail tomorrow. Recently I found a Danish site which gives a lot of detail of sub species but unless I can narrow down the basic species it gets a bit daunting. And sometimes there does appear to be slight differences between Danish and UK spiders.

Anyhow, thanks again for pointing me in the right direction.

[Venger]

Try this one, it gives good taxnomy, distribution, photos and illustrations:

Jumping Spiders