Menemerus nigli

Menemerus nigli
M. nigli from Cambodia
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Subphylum: Chelicerata
Class: Arachnida
Order: Araneae
Infraorder: Araneomorphae
Family: Salticidae
Subfamily: Salticinae
Genus: Menemerus
Species:
M. nigli
Binomial name
Menemerus nigli
Wesołowska & Freudenschuss, 2012

Menemerus nigli is a species of jumping spider that was first found in Pakistan. A member of the genus Menemerus, the spider is medium-sized, typically 4.89 millimetres (0.193 in) in length, with a dark brown carapace and grey-brown abdomen that has a distinctive cream and white pattern created by small hairs. The male was described in 2012 by Wanda Wesołowska and Mario Freudenschuss and the female by Pir Asmat Ali, Wayne Maddison. Muhammad Zahid and Abida Buttin in 2018. It was originally found in Asia but was also introduced into Latin America, the first specimens being identified in Brazil in 2020. It seems to thrive amongst the sunlit stucco walls that are common in cities across the region. Menemerus nigli is used as an example of the ability of species that adapt to human habitation to expand their ecological niche and become global species.

Taxonomy and etymology

male M. nigli on a ruin in Thailand

Menemerus affinis is a species of jumping spider that was first described by Wanda Wesołowska and Mario Freudenschuss in 2012. They allocated it to the genus Menemerus.[1] It is one of over 500 species identified by the Polish arachnologist over her career.[2] Initially, only the male of the species was identified, with the first description of the female being by Pir Asmat Ali, Wayne Maddison. Muhammad Zahid and Abida Buttin in 2018.[3] The genus was first circumscribed in 1868 by Eugène Simon and contains over 60 species.[4] The genus name derives from two Greek words, meaning "certainly" and "diurnal".[5] The species is dedicated to Johannes Nigl, a mentor and friend of Freudenschuss.[1]

Menemerus shares some characteristics, including having narrow, oval, fixed embolus, with the genera Hypaeus and Pellenes.[6] Phylogenetic analysis has shown that the genus is related to the genera Helvetia and Phintella and is classified in the tribe Chrysillini.[7][8]} Chrysillines are monophyletic.[9] The tribe is ubiquitous across most of the continents of the world.[7] It is allocated to the subclade Saltafresia in the clade Salticoida.[9] In 2016, Jerzy Prószyński created a group of genera named Menemerines after the genus.[10] The vast majority of the species in Menemerines are members of the genus, with additional examples from Kima and Leptorchestes.[11]

Description

Views and details of male (5–8) and female (9–15) Menemerus nigli

Menemerus nigli is a medium-sized spider, with total length of approximately 4.89 millimetres (0.193 in).[12] The male is slightly smaller than the female. The female has a cephalothorax, ts forward section, which measures 2.82 millimetres (0.111 in), 0.1 millimetres (0.0039 in) longer than the male, and, behind this, an abdomen 1.04 millimetres (0.041 in) longer at 3.76 millimetres (0.148 in).[13] The width of the carapace for both is 2.06 millimetres (0.081 in), while the abdomen measures between 3.06 and 3.16 millimetres (0.120 and 0.124 in) wide.[13] Its carapace, the hard upper side of its cephalothorax, is dark brown and oval and covered in white and fawn hairs, with dense white hairs making it look as if the spider has a streak of white across it that extends to the front of the spider and its very low clypeus, part of its face. Its eye field is back. Its sternum, the underside of the cephalothorax, is light brown. Large and dark brown, its chelicerae is unidentate. Its remaining mouthparts, including its labium and maxilae, are light brown.[1] The female has two prominent teeth at the front and long fangs..[14]

The spider's abdomen is smaller and narrower than its carapace, and is a brownish-grey. The male has six large patches on its upper surface.[1] The female's abdomen has cream markings and white hairs on its top. These give a distinctive pattern. The underside of the spider's abdomen is grey with a few white hairs visible. The female has yellow spinnerets.{[15] In contrast, the male's spinnerets are grey. Its front legs are brown and stouter than the others. They are brown while the remainder are yellow with brown patches. They all have a dense covering of brown and white hairs. Its leg spines are brown.[1]

The spider has distinctive copulatory organs. The male has large yellow pedipalps that have white hairs. Its palpal tibia is short and has a pronounced spike known as a tibals apophyses. Its palpal bulb consists of a tegulum that is shaped like an elongated oval and has a furrow that runs down its external surface between its haematodocha. Projecting from the tegulum is a relatively long thin embolus, which has a large membranous conductor lying next to it. Alongside the tegulum there is an elongated cymbium.[16]

The female has broad bowl-like indentations in its epigyne, the visible external part of its copulatory organs. It has an opening at the front, which has a sharp fold on its inner wall that Ali, Maddison, Zahid and Butt thought may serve as a guide for the male's embolus. The spider's copulatory openings lead, via relatively large insemination ducts, to round spermathecae. These are positioned to the middle of the epigyne and overlap.{[14]

The male is similar to two other species in the same genus, Menemerus pilosus and Menemerus zimbabwensis, both found in Africa, differing in the abdominal pattern.[1] The embolus is larger than other species in the genus.[13] The female is distinguished from other Menemerus species by the distinctive folds that extend from the broad forward-facing copulatory duct, as shown in Figure 11.[15] The juvenile male is generally darker in appearance and can be identified by its club-shaped cymbium at the end of its pedipalp.[17] The adult male has white hairs on the side of the chelicerae.[18]

Distribution and habitat

Menemerus is primarily an African genus but spiders are found throughout Africa and Asia, and have been identified as far as Latin America.[19] Menemerus nigli was first identified in western Pakistan by Wanda Wesołowska and Mario Freudenschuss. This was the second example of the genus to be identified in the country.[20] The spider has also been found in India and Thailand.[3] A specimen in West Bengal, India, was confirmed as being from the same species by comparing the DNA barcode in 2017.[21] It was the fifth species of the genus found in the country.[22] The spider was first identified in Thailand in 2020.[23]

The species has a wide range, extending over 4,500 kilometres (2,800 mi).[24] Many of the images of Menemerus fulvus posted online may depict Menemerus nigli and so the species's distribution may be over a wider area of south and south-east Asia than has been confirmed.[4] The spider has also successfully established itself in Latin America. In 2020, Rafael M. Mariante and David E. Hill identified examples of the species from three sites in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.[25]

The spider was first found under stones.[26] It was also subsequently found to live on stoney ground, on indoor walls and on exterior walls.[25] It seems to be comfortable in ruins as well as places of current habitation.[23] However, it seems to particularly thrive on the painted and stuccoed walls that can be found in cities like Rio de Janeiro and others across the region. The evidence that it has found a niche in urban structures supports the view that species that can adapt to habitats created by people may be more successful when introduced to a new and far away habitat.[25]

References

Citations

  1. ^ a b c d e f Wesołowska & Freudenschuss 2012, p. 452.
  2. ^ Wiśniewski 2020, p. 6.
  3. ^ a b World Spider Catalog (2021). "Menemerus nigli Wesolowska & Freudenschuss, 2012". World Spider Catalog. 22.0. Bern: Natural History Museum. Retrieved 4 July 2021.
  4. ^ a b Mariante & Hill 2020, p. 1.
  5. ^ Fernández-Rubio 2013, p. 128.
  6. ^ Maddison 2015, p. 233.
  7. ^ a b Maddison & Hedin 2003, p. 541.
  8. ^ Maddison 2015, p. 231.
  9. ^ a b Maddison 2015, p. 278.
  10. ^ Prószyński 2017, p. 112.
  11. ^ Prószyński 2017, p. 116.
  12. ^ Chatterjee et al. 2017, p. 109.
  13. ^ a b c Ali et al. 2018, p. 6.
  14. ^ a b Ali et al. 2018, p. 7.
  15. ^ a b Ali et al. 2018, p. 8.
  16. ^ Wesołowska & Freudenschuss 2012, p. 451, 452.
  17. ^ Mariante & Hill 2020, p. 8.
  18. ^ Mariante & Hill 2020, p. 9.
  19. ^ Mariante & Hill 2020, pp. 2, 3.
  20. ^ Wesołowska & Freudenschuss 2012, p. 453.
  21. ^ Abhijith, Sheeba & Sudhikumar 2021, p. 53.
  22. ^ Tripathi et al. 2021, p. 1.
  23. ^ a b Seyfulina, Azarkina & Kartsev 2020, p. 90.
  24. ^ Seyfulina, Azarkina & Kartsev 2020, p. 91.
  25. ^ a b c Mariante & Hill 2020, p. 15.
  26. ^ Wesołowska & Freudenschuss 2012, p. 449.

Bibliography

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