Fencepost Jumping Spider

Marpissa muscosa

"Marpissa muscosa" is a species of jumping spider. Females reach about 8–11 mm length, males only 6–8 mm. Both sexes are coloured grey to brown. The whole spider has a furry appearance and is flattened in shape.
Male Marpissa muscosa, Heesch, Netherlands A 40 shot stack at 5:1 magnification of a subject about 6-8mm in size. Disclaimer: I sacrificed this individual. I prefer not to, it's not my style, but when I do, I will always mention it. My current approach is to use arthropods already found dead, and only exceptionally take a live one. And in that case, preferably only once per species. The part I personally like about this photo is the background ambience. Most extreme macro photos have a clinical all-black background. It's not difficult to create a lighter or colored background during capturing, the problem is in post processing. The background tends to have a lot of artifacts and may also reveal staging tricks you don't want in the scene. Brushing those away in a non-black background is very difficult and time consuming, hence most just hide everything using all-black. Extreme Macro,Marpissa muscosa,WeMacro

Appearance

The species builds a kind of nest under the bark of dead trees. Up to 100 of these nests can occur side by side. This spider has a hierarchy: weaker animals will show their inferiority by strutting their front legs and slowly receding from the scene.
Marpissa muscosa Made with a 50mm reversed on some extension tubes. Geotagged,Marpissa muscosa,Netherlands,Summer

Distribution

"M. muscosa" lives in the Palaearctic.

It is uncommon but widespread in England, more frequent in the south and east. It is widespread in northern Europe.

References:

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Taxonomy
KingdomAnimalia
DivisionArthropoda
ClassArachnida
OrderAraneae
FamilySalticidae
GenusMarpissa
SpeciesM. muscosa
Photographed in
Germany
United Kingdom
Greece
Netherlands