''Rarahu'' is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

jumping spiders Jumping spiders are a group of spiders that constitute the family Salticidae. As of 2019, this family contained over 600 described genera and over 6,000 described species, making it the largest family of spiders at 13% of all species. Jumping spi ...

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

Samoa Samoa, officially the Independent State of Samoa; sm, Sāmoa, and until 1997 known as Western Samoa, is a Polynesian island country consisting of two main islands (Savai'i and Upolu); two smaller, inhabited islands (Manono Island, Manono an ...

. , it contains only one species, ''Rarahu nitida''. Berland probably adapted the genus name ''Rarahu'' from

Pierre Loti Pierre Loti (; pseudonym of Louis Marie-Julien Viaud ; 14 January 1850 – 10 June 1923) was a French naval officer and novelist, known for his exotic novels and short stories.This article is derived largely from the ''Encyclopædia Britannica El ...

's book of the same name, which was published in 1880. Loti himself either used the rare Tahitian word "rarahu", meaning (amongst other things) "to eat '' tapu'' things", or changed the name of the volcano " Raraku".Mabbott 1946 The species name is from

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

''nitida'' "shining", "handsome", or "neat" (a

false cognate False cognates are pairs of words that seem to be cognates because of similar sounds and meaning, but have different etymologies; they can be within the same language or from different languages, even within the same family. For example, the Engli ...

Footnotes

References

* (1946): The Origin of Pierre Loti's Name "Rarahu". ''Modern Language Notes'' 61(4): 288. * (2007)
The world spider catalog
version 8.0. ''American Museum of Natural History''.

External links

Salticidae Endemic fauna of Samoa Monotypic Salticidae genera Spiders of Oceania {{salticidae-stub