''Tanzania pusillus'' 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 the country

. First described in 2000 by Wanda Wesołowska and Anthony Russell-Smith, the species was originally known as ''Lilliput pusillus'' but was renamed in 2008. 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 diminutive, 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 ...

and

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 long. The spider is generally yellow apart from the dark brown eye field and grey top to its abdomen. 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 rings around their different segments. Its pedipalps are yellow and

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 grey.The male has distinctive copulatory organs with a distinctive embolus that is shaped like a corkscrew. The female has not been described.

Taxonomy and etymology

''Tanzania pusillus'' 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 Wanda Wesołowska and Anthony Russell-Smith in 2000. It was one of over 500 species that that the Polish arachnologist Wesołowska identified during her career. They allocated it to the

''Lilliput'', first

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 ...

by Wesolowska and Anthony Russell-Smith in 2000 after the nation in

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 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 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 that can be translated diminutive. 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''. 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. 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 ...

''.

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 in 2017.

Description

''Tanzania pusillus'' 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, yellow

, the hard upper part of the cephalothorax that is between in length and is typically wide. It is covered in delicate hairs and has an indistinct brown stripe running down its middle. The eye field is dark brown. 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 abdomen is similar in size to its carapace, measuring between 0.8 and 0.9 mm in length and having a similar width of 0.6 mm. It is greyish on top and yellowish underneath with long brown hairs. The abdomen has a vague darker pattern that is reminiscent of that on the related ''

Tanzania mkomaziensis ''Tanzania mkomaziensis'' is a jumping spider that lives in Tanzania. It was originally known as ''Lilliput mkomaziensis''. References

Endemic fauna of Tanzania Salticidae Spiders described in 2000 Spiders of Africa Fauna of Tanzania { ...

''. The spider has grey

s and whitish-yellow

that have brown rings around the bottom of each leg segment. The pedipalps, sensory organs near the mouth, are yellow. The spider's copulatory organs are very distinctive, particularly the shape of the male embolus. The spider has a rounded cymbium that encases its

palpal bulb The two palpal bulbs – also known as palpal organs and genital bulbs – are the copulatory organs of a male spider. They are borne on the last segment of the pedipalps (the front "limbs" of a spider), giving the spider an appearance often descr ...

, which is irregular in shape and is almost as large as the cymbium. The seminal duct meanders inside it. The palpal bulb has a distinctively-shaped corkscrew embolus projecting from the top. The female has not been described.

Distribution

Initially all ''Tanzania'' spiders were identified living in the country

. The genus is now considered to live across tropical Africa. ''Tanzania pusillus'' is

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 ...

to Tanzania. The

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several ...

was found in

Mkomazi National Park Mkomazi National Park is located in northeastern Tanzania on the Kenyan border, in Kilimanjaro Region and Tanga Region. It was established as a game reserve in 1951 and upgraded to a national park in 2006. The park covers over , and is dominate ...

in 1994 along with other examples.

References

Citations

Bibliography

* * * * * * * {{Taxonbar, from=Q2665988 Endemic fauna of Tanzania Salticidae Spiders described in 2000 Spiders of Africa Taxa named by Wanda Wesołowska