Medmassa Simon, 1887

Jin, Chi, Zhang, Hongli & Zhang, Feng, 2019, First records of the corinnid genera Allomedmassa Dankittipakul & Singtripop, 2014 and Medmassa Simon, 1887 from China, with the description of a new genus (Araneae: Corinnidae), Zootaxa 4585 (3), pp. 459-477 : 467-469

Medmassa Simon, 1887 (flđffl)

Megaera Simon 1877: 87 . Medmassa Simon 1887 : clvii; Simon 1898: 191; Brignoli 1983: 557; Deeleman-Reinhold 2001: 345; Haddad & Bosselaers 2010: 3.

Astratea Thorell 1890: 364 ; Deeleman-Reinhold 1995: 44.

Type species: Megaera frenata Simon, 1877 , by original designation.

Diagnosis. Differs from most of Asian corinnid genera by the high number of anterior tibial spines (7–10 pairs on tibia I), absence of morphological adaptations to ant-mimicking and only one loop of the sperm duct, except the new genus Paramedmassa gen. nov. described in this paper. It differs from Paramedmassa gen. nov. mostly by the carapace almost round and flattened, whereas it is oval and obviously convex in Medmassa .

Composition. Ten species: Medmassa celebensis ( Deeleman-Reinhold, 1995) , M. christae Raven, 2015 , M. diplogale Deeleman-Reinhold, 2001 , M. frenata ( Simon, 1877) , M. insignis ( Thorell, 1890) , M. kltina (Barrion & Litsinger, 1995) , M. pulchra (Thorell, 1881) , M. semiaurantiaca Simon, 1910 , M. tigris ( Deeleman-Reinhold, 1995) and M. torta sp. nov..

Distribution. Northern Australia, Africa, New Guinea, Southeast Asia and China.

Remarks. Deeleman-Reinhold (2001) and Haddad & Bosselaers (2010) placed Medmassa in Castianeirinae. Haddad (2013b) transferred Medmassa to the Corinninae based on the result of his phylogenetic analysis of Afrotropical Castianeirinae. A phylogenetic analysis of the two-clawed spiders grouped in Dionycha presented by Ramírez (2014) showed that the genus Medmassa (based on a species from Thailand) appeared as the sister group of Corinninae. Similar to Allomedmassa , which was suggested as the sister group to Castianeirinae in the molecular phylogeny of Wheeler et al. (2017), both genera lack characteristics to be considered as true castianeirines.