Biology:Phintella occidentalis

Short description: Species of spider

Phintella occidentalis
The related male Phintella versicolor
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Subphylum:	Chelicerata
Class:	Arachnida
Order:	Araneae
Infraorder:	Araneomorphae
Family:	Salticidae
Subfamily:	Salticinae
Genus:	Phintella
Species:	P. occidentalis
Binomial name
Phintella occidentalis Wesołowska & Russell-Smith, 2022

Phintella occidentalis is a species of jumping spider in the subfamily Salticinae that lives in Ivory Coast. First described by Wanda Wesołowska and Anthony Russell-Smith in 2022, the species is named after the Latin word for western as it is found in West Africa. The spider is small, with a cephalothorax between 2.3 and 2.8 mm (0.091 and 0.110 in) long and an abdomen that is between 3.1 and 3.5 mm (0.12 and 0.14 in) long. The female is smaller than the male. The carapace is brown, the female light and the male dark. The abdomen is yellow and is marked by two wide brown stripes on the female and a grey streak on the male. It is the abdominal pattern that most clearly distinguishes the species from others in the genus. The copulatory organs are also different. The male has a longer tibial apophysis, or appendage and the female has seminal ducts that diverge and then converge.

Taxonomy

Phintella occidentalis was first described in 2022 by Wanda Wesołowska and Anthony Russell-Smith. The species is one of more than 500 described by Wesołowska. The species name is the Latin for western and relates to the fact that it comes from West Africa. It was allocated to the genus Phintella, raised in 1906 by Embrik Strand and W. 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. Genetic analysis confirms that it is related to the genera Helvetia and Menemerus and is classified in the tribe Chrysillini, named after the genus Chrysilla. In 2017, Jerzy Prószyński grouped the genus with 32 other genera of jumping spiders under the name Chrysillines in the supergroup Chrysilloida.

Description

Phintella occidentalis is a small spider. The female has a cephalothorax that typically has a length of 2.3 mm (0.091 in) and a width of 2 mm (0.079 in). It has a light brown carapace with a darker eye field. There are white hairs on the side and the clypeus. The abdomen is typically 3.1 mm (0.12 in) long and 2 mm (0.079 in) wide. It is yellow with a pattern of two wide brown stripes down the middle on the top and additional stripes on the sides. The spinnerets are yellow and the chelicerae are yellow-brown. The legs are also yellow, with brown hairs and spines. The epigyne is small and has seminal ducts that initially diverge before converging on large spherical spermathecae.

The male is longer than the female. It has a cephalothorax that is typically 2.8 mm (0.11 in) long and 2.2 mm (0.087 in) wide and an abdomen that is 3.5 mm (0.14 in) long and 1.7 mm (0.067 in) wide. The carapace is dark brown with a lighter area near the eye field. The eyes have fawn hairs around them. The chelicerae are unidentate, with small teeth, and light brown. The abdomen is hairy and yellow, apart from a grey streak down the middle on the top and four lines of dots on the underside, and has dark lines along the sides. The legs are long and thin. The spinnerets and pedipalps are brown. The palpal bulb has a curved embolus and relatively long appendage, or apophysis, on the tibia.

The species can be identified by the pattern on the abdomen, which is particularly pronounced on the female. Superficially, the copulatory organs are similar to the related Phintella popovi but the length of the tibial apophysis on the male and morphology of the seminal ducts on the female can help tell the two the species apart.

Distribution

Phintella occidentalis is endemic to Ivory Coast. The male holotype and female paratype were both found in Lamto in Bandama Forest in 1975.

References

Bibliography

• Bösenberg, W.; Strand, Embrik (1906). "Japanische Spinnen" (in DE). Abhandlungen der Senckenbergischen Naturforschenden Gesellschaft 30: 93–422. 
• Cameron, H. D.; Wijesinghe, D. P. (1993). "Simon's Keys to the Salticid Groups". Peckhamia 3 (1): 1–26. 
• Maddison, Wayne P. (2015). "A phylogenetic classification of jumping spiders (Araneae: Salticidae)". The Journal of Arachnology 43 (3): 231–292. doi:10.1636/arac-43-03-231-292. 
• Maddison, Wayne P.; Hedin, Marshal C. (2003). "Jumping spider phylogeny (Araneae: Salticidae)". Invertebrate Systematics 17 (4): 529–549. doi:10.1071/IS02044. 
• Prószyński, Jerzy (1983a). "Position of genus Phintella (Araneae: Salticidae)". Acta Arachnologica 31 (2): 43–48. doi:10.2476/asjaa.31.43. ISSN 1880-7852. 
• Prószyński, Jerzy (1983b). "Redescriptions of types of Oriental and Australian Salticidae (Aranea) in the Hungarian Natural History Museum, Budapest". Folia Entomologica Hungarica 44: 283–297. 
• Prószyński, Jerzy (2017). "Pragmatic classification of the World's Salticidae (Araneae)". Ecologica Montenegrina 12: 1–133. doi:10.37828/em.2017.12.1. 
• Wesołowska, Wanda; Russell-Smith, Anthony (2022). "Jumping spiders from Ivory Coast collected by J.-C. Ledoux (Araneae, Salticidae)". European Journal of Taxonomy 841: 1–143. doi:10.5852/ejt.2022.841.1943. 
• Wiśniewski, Konrad (2020). "Over 40 years with jumping spiders: on the 70th birthday of Wanda Wesołowska". Zootaxa 4899 (1): 5–14. doi:10.11646/zootaxa.4899.1.3. 

Wikidata ☰ Q116256130 entry