[PW] Ashtabula genus of jumping spiders

[Douglas Eric Anderson]

This one is for me:

In random surfing about the city where I live and work (Ashtabula, Ohio),
I stumbled across a brief mention of "Ashtabula" as the name of a genus of
Latin American jumping spiders.

I am curious as to how and why this genus got the name.

Pictures: http://tolweb.org/Ashtabula/2879
Entry from the Global Species Database of Salticidae (Araneae):
http://www.gsd-salt.miiz.waw.pl/salticidae.php
>From "A pictorial key to genera of the Latin America Salticidae":
http://salticidae.org/salticid/diagnost/keys-sal/lat-uni.htm (scroll down
to section II/20)
Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashtabula_(spider)

Evidently the researchers who first described the species (and probably
assigned the genus name) were a pair named Peckham and Peckham (presumably
either a father-son, husband-wife, or sibling pair).  Unfortunately, the
surname "Peckham" is not to be found in any of the local history books or
indices we have in Ashtabula, so that isn't much to go on as to the why of
the genus name.

Here is the citation given at one of the above sites for the first
taxonomic description of the Ashtabula genus:

Peckham G.W., Peckham E.G. 1894 Spiders of the Marptusa Group. Occ. Pap.
Nat. Hist. Soc. Wisc. 2 (2): 140 ., illustrations T. 14 F. 4

So we now have initials for the Peckhams; and they published in the (?)
Occasional Papers of the Natural History Society of Wisconsin, for
whatever that's worth.

Does anyone have access to that publication, and if so, would you be
willing to email/fax/mail us a copy for our local history/clippings files?
 If not, does anyone have any other leads on how we can find out the
reason the infamous Peckhams burdened these poor spiders with the name of
a small city/large county in northeastern Ohio?

-- Doug A.


-- 
Douglas E. Anderson
Reference Coordinator
Ashtabula County District Library
335 W. 44th St.
Ashtabula, OH 44004 USA
440/997-9341 ext. 1
fax: 440/992-7714
http://www.acdl.info/