Messua (spider) explained

Messua is a spider genus of the family Salticidae (jumping spiders).

Etymology

The genus name is derived from Messua, a female character from Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book. Other salticid genera with names of Kipling's characters are Akela, Bagheera and Nagaina.

Taxonomy

The genus was first described in 1896 by American arachnologists George and Elizabeth Peckham based on the type species Messua desidiosa.^[1]

The genus Messua was synonymized with Zygoballus by Eugène Simon in 1903. After examining the type specimen for Messua desidiosa, Simon commented that it was "much less divergent from typical Zygoballus than [the Peckhams'] description would indicate."^[2] This was reversed by Wayne Maddison in 1996, and Messua restored as a valid genus. Maddison also transferred several species that had previously been placed in Metaphidippus into Messua.^[3]

Species

• Messua centralis (Peckham & Peckham, 1896) – Panama
• Messua dentigera (F. O. P-Cambridge, 1901) – Guatemala to Panama
• Messua desidiosa Peckham & Peckham, 1896 – Costa Rica, Panama
• Messua donalda (Kraus, 1955) – El Salvador
• Messua latior (Roewer, 1955) – Panama
• Messua laxa (Chickering, 1946) – Panama
• Messua limbata (Banks, 1898) – United States, Mexico
• Messua moma (F. O. P.-Cambridge, 1901) – Guatemala to Guyana
• Messua octonotata (F. O. P.-Cambridge, 1901) – Central America
• Messua pura (Bryant, 1948) – Mexico
• Messua tridentata (F. O. P.-Cambridge, 1901) – Mexico

Notes and References

1. Peckham. George. Peckham. Elizabeth. Spiders of the family Attidae from Central America and Mexico. 1896. Occasional Papers of the Natural History Society of Wisconsin. 3. 1. 1–101.
2. Book: Simon, Eugène. Histoire Naturelle des Araignées. 2nd. Paris. 1897–1903. 863. French.
3. Pelegrina Franganillo and other jumping spiders formerly placed in the genus Metaphidippus (Araneae: Salticidae). Wayne P.. Maddison. Wayne Maddison. Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. 1996. 154. 215–368.