CLOSED: What kind of spider?

I found this guy walking on the side of a house located on the edge of a swamp preserve in Port Saint Lucie, Florida. The house (and preserve) is on the mainland side of the Indian River. I'm curious to know what it might be. I understand the photo is unclear, but even a family identification would be appreciated.

For size, I believe it is 3-4cm down the length of its back. Also, the camera mucked up the colors a bit. The orange/brown in the face-like pattern on its back was actually a touch brighter.

Thanks!

This looks like a jumping spider, family Salticidae. On this forum, a similar spider from Florida was identified as Phidippus otiosus. Yours looks to be the same. I believe you probably meant 3-4mm, not cm, otherwise that would be a rather frightening jumping spider. See http://davesgarden.com/guides/bf/go/946/ for the info from here.

Thanks for the reply!

Sorry, but I definitely meant cm, not mm. Notice the bolt head in the image - it's holding the hurricane shutters onto the window frame. Hurricane shutters need beefy bolts. The bolt head is a bit more than 1cm across. It's closer to the camera than the spider (funny angle), so it's not a very good reference.

I wish I could've gotten a better photo, but unfortunately the little bugger was making good his escape!

Interesting. If it is indeed 3-4cm in body length, my ID might not be correct. The phidippus genus contains the largest species of jumping spiders in North America, but they only reach a little over half the size of what you have described (2-3cm, if they reach that at all) with the largest, to my knowledge, occurring in the southwestern US. By conventional measures, a greater than 10mm body length is already considered rather large for a jumping spider. Suunto is one of the experts in this forum, hopefully he reads this thread and can give us his opinion.

Well, the photo *was* taken less than a half mile from a nuclear plant!

Anyway, I'll take a look around tomorrow to see if it's still there and it wants to pose for a few more photos.

Thanks again for the help!

I believe that this could be Phidippus regius, the largest jumping spider in eastern North America. Females (such as this one) can be highly variable in coloration, usually occurring in some shade of gray or orange, whereas the males are black and white, quite similar in appearance to P. audax. See ttp://tinyurl.com/ms5myk for an orange female P. regius, and http://tinyurl.com/km2o8m for detailed information on the species.

After conferring with a coworker (the house is actually my office), we decided that my memory tends to inflate the size of certain critters such as these. I also inflated the size of the bolt head. I took a caliper to it and it's 8mm from flat to flat. With that info, I'd reassess the spider at being 15-20mm -- making it quite possibly a larger P. regius.

Thanks a ton!

It's a pretty thing. It looks like it may be a type of tirantula.