New data on the jumping spiders of the subfamily Spartaeinae (Araneae: Salticidae) from Africa
Author
Azarkina, Galina N.
Author
Logunov, Dmitri V.
text
African Invertebrates
2010
51
1
163
182
journal article
http://dx.doi.org/10.5733/afin.051.0103
Genus
Meleon
Wanless,
1984
This Afrotropical genus currently consists of eight described species (Platnick
2009
), occurring from Guinea in the west to Madagascar in the east.
The composition of
Meleon
requires further study, as the genus seems to be a paraphyletic taxon. According to Wijesinghe (
1994
),
Meleon
should consist of only three species:
M. guineensis
(Berland & Millot,
1941
)
,
M. solitaria
(Lessert,
1927
)
and
M. kenti
(Lessert,
1925
)
; the last is the
type
species.
M. madagascarensis
and
M. russata
, as stated by Wijesinghe (
1994
), belong elsewhere. The same seems to hold true for two new
Meleon
species recently described by Logunov and Azarkina (
2008
), viz.
M. insularis
and
M. raharisonina
, as both are closely related to
M. madagascarensis
. The problem of the taxonomic status and composition of
Meleon
is outside the scope of the present work and will be considered properly elsewhere by one of us (
DL
).