''Tanzania minutus'' is a

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

of jumping spider in the

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 ...

Tanzania Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands and ...

'' that lives in South Africa and Tanzania. First described in 2000 by Wanda Wesołowska and Anthony Russell-Smith, it is a very small spider, which is recalled in its species name, a

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 ...

word meaning small, with a

carapace A carapace is a Dorsum (biology), dorsal (upper) section of the exoskeleton or shell in a number of animal groups, including arthropods, such as crustaceans and arachnids, as well as vertebrates, such as turtles and tortoises. In turtles and tor ...

typically long and an

abdomen The abdomen (colloquially called the belly, tummy, midriff, tucky or stomach) is the part of the body between the thorax (chest) and pelvis, in humans and in other vertebrates. The abdomen is the front part of the abdominal segment of the torso. ...

between 0.8 and long. The spider is generally yellow with a brown patch in the middle of the carapace and a narrow stripe running down the top of the abdomen apart from the black eye field. The spider's

legs A leg is a weight-bearing and locomotive anatomical structure, usually having a columnar shape. During locomotion, legs function as "extensible struts". The combination of movements at all joints can be modeled as a single, linear element ...

are also yellow with black patches. Its pedipalps are orange and its

spinneret A spinneret is a silk-spinning organ of a spider or the larva of an insect. Some adult insects also have spinnerets, such as those borne on the forelegs of Embioptera. Spinnerets are usually on the underside of a spider's opisthosoma, and are ...

s are darker, nearly black. The male has distinctive copulatory organs with a very short coiled embolus. The female has not been described.

Taxonomy and etymology

''Tanzania minutus'' is a

of jumping spider, a member of the

family Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its ...

Salticidae, that was first described by the

arachnologists Arachnology is the scientific study of arachnids, which comprise spiders and related invertebrates such as scorpions, pseudoscorpions, and harvestmen. Those who study spiders and other arachnids are arachnologists. More narrowly, the study of sp ...

Wanda Wesołowska and Anthony Russell-Smith in 2000. It was one of over 500 species that that Wesołowska identified during her career. Wesołowska and Russell-Smith initially allocated the spider to the

''Lilliput'',

circumscribed In geometry, the circumscribed circle or circumcircle of a polygon is a circle that passes through all the vertices of the polygon. The center of this circle is called the circumcenter and its radius is called the circumradius. Not every polyg ...

at the same time by the same authors and named after the nation in the novel

Gulliver's Travels ''Gulliver's Travels'', or ''Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships'' is a 1726 prose satire by the Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan ...

. The genus was subsequently renamed ''

'' by Ahmet Ö. Koçak and Muhabbet Kemalin in 2008 as the name ''Lilliput'' was already held by a genus of

beetle Beetles are insects that form the order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Endopterygota. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 400,000 describ ...

. The new genus name relates to the

species distribution Species distribution —or species dispersion — is the manner in which a biological taxon is spatially arranged. The geographic limits of a particular taxon's distribution is its range, often represented as shaded areas on a map. Patterns of ...

. The species is named for the

word ''minutus'', that can be translated little. In

Wayne Maddison Wayne Paul Maddison , is a professor and Canada Research Chair at the departments of zoology and botany at the University of British Columbia, and the Director of the Spencer Entomological Collection at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum. His research ...

's 2015 study of spider

phylogenetic classification Phylogenetic nomenclature is a method of nomenclature for taxa in biology that uses phylogenetic definitions for taxon names as explained below. This contrasts with the traditional approach, in which taxon names are defined by a ''type'', which ...

, the genus ''Tanzania'' was placed in the

tribe The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English language, English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in p ...

Euophryini This is a member of the

clade A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English term, ...

Saltafresia. Spiders in the genus are related to ''

Euophrys ''Euophrys'' is a genus of jumping spiders that was first described by Carl Ludwig Koch in 1834. The small black ''E. omnisuperstes'' lives on Mount Everest at elevations up to 6,700 meters, possibly making it the most elevated animal in the world ...

'' and '' Talavera''. Junxia Zhang and Maddison speculated that it may be in a clade with ''

Thyenula ''Thyenula'' is a genus of African Salticidae, jumping spiders that was first described by Eugène Simon, Eugène Louis Simon in 1902. Species it contains twenty-four species, found only in Africa: *''Thyenula alotama'' Wanda Wesołowska, Wesolo ...

'' in 2015 but the relationship has not been confirmed. In 2017,

Jerzy Prószyński Jerzy Prószyński (born 1935 in Warsaw) is a Polish arachnologist specializing in systematics of jumping spiders (family Salticidae). He is a graduate of the University of Warsaw, a long-term employee of the Siedlce University of Natural Scienc ...

placed the genus in an informal group called euophryines.

Description

''Tanzania minutus'' is a very small spider. It has a body divided into two main parts: a

cephalothorax The cephalothorax, also called prosoma in some groups, is a tagma of various arthropods, comprising the head and the thorax fused together, as distinct from the abdomen behind. (The terms ''prosoma'' and ''opisthosoma'' are equivalent to ''cepha ...

and an

. The male has a high, yellowish

, the hard upper part of the cephalothorax, that is typically long and is typically wide. It is covered in long thin grey hairs and has a pattern consisting of a brown patch in the middle and a brown line along its sides. The eye field is black with a metallic lustre and very small light scales around some of the eyes. The underside, or sternum, is yellow. The mouthparts are distinctive with yellow chelicerae, labium and

maxillae The maxilla (plural: ''maxillae'' ) in vertebrates is the upper fixed (not fixed in Neopterygii) bone of the jaw formed from the fusion of two maxillary bones. In humans, the upper jaw includes the hard palate in the front of the mouth. The t ...

. The male spider's

is similar in size to its carapace, measuring between 0.8 and in length and having a similar width of 0.6 mm. It is similarly yellow on top, with a dark narrow stripe running down the middle. The topside of the abdomen is covered in long thin brown hairs and has a delicate

scutum The ''scutum'' (; plural ''scuta'') was a type of shield used among Italic peoples in antiquity, most notably by the army of ancient Rome starting about the fourth century BC. The Romans adopted it when they switched from the military formati ...

visible in the middle. The underside is yellowish. The spider has dark, nearly black

s. The spider's

are generally yellow with black patches. They all have long brown hairs and brown spines. The pedipalps, sensory organs near the mouth, are orange. The spider's copulatory organs are very distinctive, particularly the shape of the male . The spider has a rounded cymbium that encases its palpal bulb, which is irregular in shape and is almost as large as the cymbium. A single seminal duct meanders inside it. It has a very short tightly-coiled embolus projecting from the top. The female is not been described.

Distribution and habitat

Initially all ''Tanzania'' spiders were identified in Tanzania. The holotype for ''Tanzania minutus'' was found in Mkomazi National Park in 1996. Along with the related ''Tanzania mkomaziensis'', the species has also been found in South Africa. This discovery is one of the reasons that the genus is now considered to live across tropical Africa. It lives in

bushland In Australia, bushland is a blanket term for land which supports remnant vegetation or land which is disturbed but still retains a predominance of the original floristics and structure. Human survival in bushland has a whole mythology evolving ...

dominated by plant species of the genera ''

Acacia ''Acacia'', commonly known as the wattles or acacias, is a large genus of shrubs and trees in the subfamily Mimosoideae of the pea family Fabaceae. Initially, it comprised a group of plant species native to Africa and Australasia. The genus na ...

'' and '' Commiphora''.

References

Citations

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * {{Taxonbar, from=Q4937991 Fauna of Tanzania Salticidae Spiders described in 2000 Spiders of Africa Spiders of South Africa Taxa named by Wanda Wesołowska