Hyllus rotundithorax
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| Hyllus rotundithorax | |
|---|---|
 | |
| A related species, Hyllus argyrotoxus | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Subphylum: | Chelicerata |
| Class: | Arachnida |
| Order: | Araneae |
| Infraorder: | Araneomorphae |
| Family: | Salticidae |
| Genus: | Hyllus |
| Species: | H. rotundithorax |
| Binomial name | |
| Hyllus rotundithorax Wesołowska & Russell-Smith, 2000 | |
Hyllus rotundithorax is a species of jumping spider in the genus Hyllus that is endemic to Tanzania. It lives near rivers. The spider was first described in 2000 by Wanda Wesołowska and Anthony Russell-Smith. The spider is large, with a brown carapace 5.8 mm (0.23 in) long and an abdomen 6.8 mm (0.27 in) long. The species has a distinctive rounded thorax, after which it is named, and a long thin embolus. Only the male has been identified.
Hyllus rotundithorax is a jumping spider that was first described by Wanda Wesołowska and Anthony Russell-Smith in 2000.[1] It is one of over 500 species identified by the Polish arachnologist Wesołowska.[2] The species name is derived from two Latin words that describe the shape of the spider.[3] It was the allocated to the genus Hyllus, which had been first raised by Carl Ludwig Koch in 1846. The genus is similar to Evarcha, differing in size.[4] The precise relationship between the genera is unknown but molecular analysis confirms that they are closely related and species from one genus are sometimes misidentified as members of the other.[5][6] The genus is found throughout Africa and contains one of the largest jumping spiders discovered.[7]
In Wayne Maddison's 2015 study of spider phylogenetic classification, the genus Hyllus was placed in the clade Saltafresia.[8] He considered it a member of the subtribe Plexippina in the tribe Plexippini.[9] Two years later, in 2017, Jerzy Prószyński grouped the genus with nine other genera of jumping spiders under the name Hyllines, which was named after the genus. He used the shape of the embolus as a distinguishing sign for the group.[10] Hyllines was itself tentatively placed within a supergroup named Hylloida, again named after the genus.[11]