Papuaneon Maddison

Maddison, Wayne P., 2016, Papuaneon, a new genus of jumping spiders from Papua New Guinea (Araneae: Salticidae: Neonini), Zootaxa 4200 (3), pp. 437-443 : 438-439

Papuaneon Maddison , new genus

Type species: Papuaneon tualapa Maddison , sp. nov.

Etymology. A combination of Papua and Neon . Grammatically masculine.

Diagnosis. The embolus of Papuaneon arises on the dorsal-terminal side of the bulb, hidden behind the tegulum ( Figs 4‒5 ), unlike Neon , whose embolus arises on the prolateral side of the bulb ( Logunov 1998). As the embolus emerges from the terminal end of the bulb, it twists into a spiral unlike any seen in Neon . The female has a swollen tarsus of the palp, and a row of macrosetae along the ventral edge of the first leg femur. The body is larger than usual for Neon , more hirsute. Further consideration of the distinctness of Papuaneon is given below under Phylogeny.

Papuaneon (like Neon ) could be confused with the distantly related euophryines, of which there are some similarly small-bodied representatives in Australasia (e.g., Zabkattus Zhang & Maddison, 2012 ; Barraina Richardson, 2013 ; Frewena Richardson, 2013 ). Papuaneon, however, lacks the euophryines’ distinctive loop of the spermophore in the retrolateral half of the tegulum and the open spiral of the embolus. Barraina , which appears close to Laufeia Simon, 1889 by the palp and body form, lacks the clearly spiral embolus, but has the typical euophryine spermophore loop. Ananeon Richardson, 2013 differs from Papuaneon in having the eyes on rounded mounds, a distinctly different path of the spermophore through the tegulum, and windows on the epigyne ( Richardson 2013: figs 6, 8 and 4, respectively). These windows indicate Ananeon may be a euophryine (see Zhang & Maddison 2015), as Richardson (2013) suggests. In addition, Richardson’s description of Ananeon makes no mention of two distinctive features of Papuaneon, the swollen female palp and the notably long macrosetae on the first tibia.

Although small-bodied, Papuaneon is not as small as Neon typically is. It resembles a small squat euophryine. As with Neon , the Mopsini, and some viciriines, the embolus appears clearly distinct from the tegulum and thus free to move ( Fig. 4 ). I did not dissect or expand the palp to test this because only a single male is known.

Figures

FIGURES 1 – 10. Papuaneon tualapa sp. nov., male holotype (specimen 2008 PNG- 1342). 1 dorsal view of carapace; 2 dorsal view of abdomen; 3 face; 4 left palp cleared in clove oil, oblique view that is mostly prolateral, slightly ventral (e, embolus; be, base of embolus); 5 left palp, ventral view (scale bar 0.1 mm); 6 left palp, retrolateral view; 7 – 10 living holotype male. Figs 1 – 10 are copyright © 2016 W. P. Maddison, released under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 3.0 license.