Spider man fell for jumpers
By Janet Raloff
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At age 13, Wayne Maddison spied the metallic-green jaws of a spider marooned on a raft of vegetation floating on Lake Ontario. He rescued the young creature, and ultimately made a pet of her and one of her young. Along the way, he fell in love with their family — jumping spiders. That intense affection has never waned. Forty years later, Maddison, now scientific codirector of the Beaty Biodiversity Museum in Vancouver, is among the foremost authorities on these stealthy pouncers of the arachnid world.
Last year, Maddison tallied some 175 distinct jumping spider species as he trekked through rainforests in Borneo’s state of Sarawak. The year before he collected a unique individual in the cloud forests west of Quito, Ecuador, and recently he asked Canadians to submit potential names for this new species of the genus Lapsias. The winning entry: lorax, for the Dr. Seuss character that not only speaks for the trees but also sports a yellow mustache, just like the face of the 5-millimeter-long male spider that can leap an astounding 7.6 centimeters (about three inches).