Messua (spider)

Messua
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Arachnida
Order:	Araneae
Family:	Salticidae
Subfamily:	Dendryphantinae
Genus:	Messua Peckham & Peckham, 1896
Type species
Messua desidiosa Peckham & Peckham, 1896
Species
see text
Diversity
11 species

Messua is a spider genus of the Salticidae family (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) — USA, 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

References

1. ^ Peckham, George; Peckham, Elizabeth (1896). "Spiders of the family Attidae from Central America and Mexico". Occasional Papers of the Natural History Society of Wisconsin 3 (1): 1–101. http://www.peckhamia.com/editions/Peckham%201896%20Spiders%20of%20the%20family%20Attidae%20from%20Central%20America%20and%20Mexico.pdf. 
2. ^ Simon, Eugène (1897–1903) (in French). Histoire Naturelle des Araignées (2nd ed.). Paris. p. 863. 
3. ^ Maddison, Wayne P. (1996). "Pelegrina Franganillo and other jumping spiders formerly placed in the genus Metaphidippus (Araneae: Salticidae)". Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology (Harvard University) 154: 215–368.