Phintella caledoniensis

The majority of Phintella species are found in the Indomalayan realm. They are very uncommon in New Caledonia, representing about 2% of specimens of jumping spiders found on the archipelago. Phintella caledonia is the most common species. It has only been seen in the rainforest around Mont Panié living at an altitude of between 950 and 1,600 m (3,120 and 5,250 ft) above sea level.

Phintella caledoniensis is a species of jumping spider, a member of the family Salticidae. that was first described in 2009 by the arachnologist Barbara Patoleta. The specific name is derived from the name of the archipelago of New Caledonia where it was first found. Patoleta allocated the spider to the genus Phintella, first circumscribed in 1906 by Embrik Strand in a publication he co-wrote with Wilhelm Bösenberg. The genus name derives from the genus Phintia, which it resembles. The genus Phintia was itself renamed Phintodes, which was subsequently absorbed into Tylogonus. There are similarities between spiders within genus Phintella and those in Chira, Chrysilla, Euophrys, Icius, Jotus and Telamonia. It is a member of the tribe Heliophaninae, renamed Chrysillini by Wayne Maddison in 2015. Chrysillines are monophyletic. The tribe is ubiquitous across most of the continents of the world. It is allocated to the subclade Saltafresia in the clade Salticoida. In 2017, Jerzy Prószyński grouped the genus with 32 other genera of jumping spiders under the name Chrysillines in the supergroup Chrysilloida.