Marpissoida: Dendryphantinae

Richman's revision of Hentzia includes 20 species of jumping spiders of which 8 are included in the most recent North American checklist. Although Hentzia is primarily a Caribbean group, the two species that occur in Massachusetts are relatively common and widespread throughout eastern North America south of the Canadian border. Fittingly Nicholas Marcellus Hentz wrote the original descriptions of both of these species, H. mitrata (from the Carolinas as Epiblemum palmarum) and H. palmarum (from Alabama as Attus mitratus), and he is honored by the generic epithet. One of the defining characters of this group given by Richman is the presence in female Hentzia jumping spiders of hair pencils below the PME (posterior media eyes) as well as on leg 1. The red arrow on the image at right point to the PME (barely visible); the yellow arrows point to the hair pencils. Although not normally apparent in the field these scales are often visible in a macro image.
Hentz (Burgess, ed.) 1875; Richman, 1989; Richman, Cutler, and Hill 2012; Hill and Edwards, 2013