It started with a short email that dropped into my inbox on 29 March 2009. It read “I would like to write an article on the subject of Maratus volans for a small on-line publication called Peckhamia. Would it be possible to use some of your photographs for this purpose ? Best Regards. David E. Hill, Greenville County, South Carolina.” A little research revealed Peckhamia as a “journal published by the Peckham Society which was founded in 1977 as an informal international alliance of amateur and professional naturalists or scientists with an interest in research related to the biology of jumping spiders”. David Hill was the General Editor of the journal and it was something he did as a vocation after retiring from a position in business. Prior to that he had been researching Salticidae behaviour, a subject he also wrote his PhD thesis on.
Clicking on “PECKHAMIA numbers for download” opened a list of freely downloadable publications, something I found immediately pleasing. The journals I had been used to from my scientific research on mites required payment to publish or read their articles. Peckhamia seemed different. The more I talked to David via email, and the more I learned about Peckhamia, the more attractive it became to have my pictures published there. It wouldn’t make me any money of course but they would make a scientific contribution. One of the Peckhamia attributes that I particularly liked was the way copyright of photographs was handled. Unlike some other journals it didn’t require me to sign over my copyright, I remained in full control of my photographs and their ownership was clearly stated. As a photographer who spent a lot of time and energy acquiring these photographs, this was an important issue.
I accepted David’s request, there was no reason not to, and I was curious to see where this would lead. He had seen my pictures on Ed Niuwenhuis’ Spiders of Australia website and I gave him a link to my Photographersdirect site from where he could upload more pictures. On 20 June 2009 he sent me a draft of his paper entitled “Euophryine jumping spiders that extend their third legs during courtship (Araneae: Salticidae: Euophryinae: Maratus, Saitis)”. It was 11 pages long and included 10 of my photographs but David invited me to send more material, so I did. In fact I sent him all I had, not only Maratus volans photographs but also photographs of other jumping spiders I had come across. After incorporating everything he returned the final draft, it had become 27 pages long and now included 101 of my photographs! Clearly what I provided had been appreciated and had been put to good use.
The most eye-catching and arguably most important part of this publication was the description and illustration of the Maratus volans courtship. It was the first time this behaviour had been described for this species in the scientific literature. But included were also a comparisons with other known spiders, a discussion of their jumps, and a detailed explanation of why the extension of flaps as wings in such a small spider would make no sense. David even made use of the photographs of two other spiders I sent him and suggested that they were probably relatives of Maratus volans. The clearest sign that my contribution was valued was in the acknowledgment section, it stated “The primary contributor to this work was Jurgen Otto, who has assembled a large collection of fine macro photographs of Maratus volans and related species from the vicinity of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. There can be no doubt that this is a most impressive collection of photographs, with respect to a spider that can be rightly viewed as one of the most impressive of the Salticidae. With this work he has given us an unsurpassed view of the visual courtship display of these spiders, as well as a great curiosity for future studies“. Wow!
David and I continued our collaboration. I must admit, initially I had been more interested in photographing these spiders and filming them, and I didn’t fancy writing scientific publications which would be a lot of work. But he convinced me otherwise. What impressed me was the way he responded to all my emails promptly and in incredible detail, without the slightest sign of ever getting tired of them. The only things he seemed to be wanting to do was to educate people and to help them, simple as that. There was never a hint of any ulterior motive, hidden agenda or ego. His knowledge also surprised me. Not only in the area of jumping spiders did he know his stuff, he was equally versed in many other subjects. Every topic I threw at him he had something interesting to say about, pretty much like Siri if you get my point. His wife once described him as a “walking encyclopedia”, not far off.
I hadn’t collaborated much with other people before, it was a fairly new experience to me. I had written almost all previous papers on mites on my own, and that was the way I wanted it to be. Now though I was introduced to a different type of working, and I liked it. We became better and better at collaborating and adopted a routine whereby I would send David photographs and videos and he would come up with a draft which we then bounced back and forth until we were happy with it and could invite others to review it. It became a well-oiled machine, even the time difference between the US and Australia worked in our favour. I could edit something and then go to bed, knowing that David would work on it overnight and I would receive another draft or at least an email response the next morning.
We became more and more sophisticated in how we worked and what details we presented, soon starting to show every spider individual from all angles, even from underneath. I had given them numbers and kept them separated so I could keep track of them all when photographing their displays. We showed them alive and dead in ethanol so that our descriptions would be useful not only for the person encountering them in the field but also the one studying preserved museum specimens. We also documented the females and juveniles where we had those. Individuals were very variable within a species, particularly the females, and showing this would surely be valuable.
Traditionally the morphology of female and male genitalia are important in spider taxonomy, so we included photographs in our papers. But soon we realised that they were of little use in distinguishing between peacock spiders. In the case of females they were too varied among individuals of the same population and in the case of the male they were too similar and did not differ much between species. However, rather than leaving them out we now included even more, if only to demonstrate this point.
We made extensive use of the videos I collected. What was good for entertaining clips on Youtube proved to be equally useful for scientific documentation. David deserves a medal for analysing them all and charting the movements of each spider in minute detail, sometimes over many pages. To his delight I acquired at some point a Casio Exilim camera, not larger than a packet of cards. Despite its small size and low purchase price, it was able to shoot an impressive 1000 frames/second video and we were able to see and document some very fast movements which until then completely escaped us.
Our very detailed photographic documentation not only of the morphology but also behaviour was quite different from previously published peacock spider descriptions that largely relied on black and white line drawings derived from a few dead preserved individuals. Some people may think that we have gone way overboard with how much detail and how many photographs we included. However, other taxonomists since then have adopted a similar approach, a clear sign that we have been on the right track and this perhaps will become a new standard for peacock spider descriptions.
Over New Year 2011/2012 I was fortunate enough to visit David at his home in South Carolina and finally to get to know him in person. We went for extensive drives around the South Carolina countryside and he introduced me to the magnificent cypress swamps in this area and to the game of backgammon that he was also an expert in. To this day he has never seen a peacock spider alive or visited Australia, but hopefully this is on the cards one day. Now 11 years later, when looking back at 34 joint publications, in which we named most of the known peacock spider species and detailed their courtship display, I am proud of what we achieved together. All done in our spare time and without external funding. Whatever measure you want to apply, our knowledge about peacock spiders has increased dramatically in the last decade, and much of it results from our joint work and publications. There have been many people who helped me over the years, but David is the one I am most grateful to. Without his curiosity, support, generosity and patience, things would have turned out very very differently.