Australia. The land of deadly, deadly things and various other cheap stereotypes persisting since the days of Crocodile Dundee. The stereotype of amazing wildlife is perhaps the most persistent, and for good reason!

To prove it, lately, a whole host of spiders from the genus Maratus was found: Peacock Spiders!

Peacock spiders, or Maratus volans came to internet stardom when the same team of researchers publicized three previous species, cutely nicknamed Sparklemuffin, Skeletorus, and Elephans.

Most delightfully, you can watch a male and a female to the tune of David Attenborough, with the male under imminent threat of being eaten should he fail to seduce the female adequately:

As you can see, they are highly sexually dimorphic, kind of like the common mallard duck, or um... peacocks...

Even though this species was first described in 1878, there were only 8 total species in the Maratus family right up to 2008. Every species thus far have been found in Australia, with one unusual exception,Maratus furvus which is found in China. That being said, over the months I've been looking at various small animals in China, I've found a bunch of them found their way here from Australia, so I'd bet 1 Steem it just hasn't been found in Australia yet. And this makes sense, given that they are so small:

_Source

ButJürgen C. Otto and David E. Hill are masters of peacock spider discovery, and you'll see their names all over the World Spider Catalogue. Of the total 67 species of peacock spiders, over half were discovered by this duo. Just recently they have found another seven species described in two separate papers. Let's dig in and see what we can find! I hope after seeing so many images of these cute little things it should cure a lot of arachnophobia out there.

Southwest Australia

Of the seven new species, five were found in Southwestern Australia. Peacock spiders typically prefer this milder climate, but this is also a major biodiversity hotspot due to a 'steep climactic gradient', meaning there are many pockets of isolated climate zones, changing significantly over a small area. In addition, this area has had a long time to brew its speciation events.

Maratus cristatus - Tufted peacock spider

When describing spider legs, scientists seem to refer to them as legs I, II, III, and IV, pairing them up symmetrically. In the case of the cristatus, legs III are apparently much longer than any other legs, and legs I and II are the shortest. Legs III are, to no surprise, the 'display legs' that are raised up high in the exotic dances of all of these male spiders to make an impression.

As you can see, the female looks very different. What I love about these spiders are there forward-facing, hunter's eyes, just like the jumping spiders I've previously discussed - a family of which the Peacock spider is a part.

Maratus electricus - Circuit-board peacock spider

All spiders were found along a sandy track adjacent to an ephemeral swamp and near a small body of water, either on twigs strewn along the edge of the track or on sedges

Comparing the habitat of the cristatus and the electricus shows that they seem to prefer considerably different spots, given their close proximity (from a human perspective, anyway). See if you can guess which is which:

As for the electricus itself, the male looks quite different (the female basically looks the same). Interestingly, it doesn't unfold its fan for full performance efficacy, leaving a kind of narrow skinny spider apperance, further exacerbating by a rather lanky hand-stand positioning:

Maratus gemmifer - Jewelled peacock spider

The name gemmifer is translated to English directly as 'bearing gems'. It's a pretty apt name for this particularly dazzling species with a sparkling gem (or so it seems) bang in the middle of its display:

When the display fan is down, it actually folds the two rounded sides back, leaving a rectangular 'folded' fan, which bursts out into this spectacular oval gem shape when in courtship. But what I love most about this species is that huge wizard's beard!

You can actually see how it folds up in this under-shot:

Maratus linnaei

The males of the linnaei species seem a little more arrogant than the others. They engage in courtship with their dancing hands, but the don't always even begin with the fan display. Who would wanna date this??

Maratus trigonus - Triangular-crowned peacock spider

This one looks like the badass, leather-wearing rebel of the bunch. It has an intriguing style of iridescence while still having a fairly well camouflaged appearance. When this spider's fan opens up, we see a new, pretty unique shape compared to the others - hence the name - and you might see a terrifying ghost trapped within if you look real hard:

_{Looks pretty happy, as far as ghosts go}

Spiders typically are seen as having 8 eyes, but actually many have only 6, as many as 12, and some have only 2 or, in the case of some cave dwellers, none at all. The jumping spider family have particularly good eyesight compared to the majority of spider's terrible vision, with two exaggerated googly eyes at the front. Below, you can see an eye on the side. Each eye in their respective positions serve an important role:

• Side eyes - These detect movement from distant prey. It's blurry, but wide-angle.
• Middle front eyes - When prey is found, these are the telephoto, colourful, clear and concise eyes that other spiders lack, which can follow and track moving prey with ease
• Side front eyes - Stalker eyes. When close, these eyes help judge leaping attacks.

One of the locations this spider was found in looks again starkly different from the others:

Southeast Australia

Two more to go! And these two are my favourite They look awesome

Maratus nimbus - Nimbus peacock spider

Another pretty apt name. The nimbus spider is named after its strange, ethereal cloudy design on its fan, which really looks like a little gateway into the clouds in the blue sky:

The female is also quite interesting here, having this morbidly obese, or perpetually pregnant appearance. An intimidating figure!

One thing Otto points out that is common in peacock spiders are two deadly looking spines right in the middle of its front eyes, as if to provide protection for those incredibly valuable pair.

Maratus sapphirus - Sapphire Coast peacock spider

This one out-does even the Jeweled spider in wealth. It has two huge sapphires on either side of its fan, as if to show the ladies he doesn't mind if they're gold diggers. He has sapphires.

In fact, the fan display is so dazzling that this spider doesn't even bother with the hand gesture displays in courtship.

Again, habitats for these two spiders were quite different. See if you can guess:

Phew! There we have it! 7 new species, each one no bigger than the tiniest, sharpest point of a pencil. And look how much we learnt about them!

Graciously, these papers are under a creative commons license allowing me to share here for you all to see, and if you want to read more details and see THOUSANDS of pictures from every possible angle (there are some amazing shots I've left out in there), the PDFs can be found here, numbers 152 an 153.

Other information source: Spider eye roles