Stenaelurillus Simon, 1886

Marathe, Kiran, Sanap, Rajesh, Joglekar, Anuradha, Caleb, John T. D. & Maddison, Wayne P., 2022, Three new and notes on two other jumping spider species of the genus Stenaelurillus Simon, 1886 (Salticidae: Aelurillina) from the Deccan Plateau, India, Zootaxa 5125 (1), pp. 1-19 : 2

Stenaelurillus Simon, 1886

Stenaelurillus Simon, 1886: 351 .

Philotheroides Strand, 1934: 275 (type Philotherus setosus Thorell, 1895: 381 ) synonymized by Prószyński, 1984: 138 (by transfer of type species).

Microheros Wesołowska & Cumming, 1999 synonymized by Logunov & Azarkina, 2018: 4 (type M. termitophagus Wesołowska & Cumming, 1999 ).

Mashonarus Wesołowska & Cumming, 2002 synonymized by Logunov & Azarkina, 2018: 4 (type M. guttatus Wesołowska & Cumming, 2002 ).

Type species. Stenaelurillus nigricaudus Simon, 1886 (by subsequent designation by Simon (1903: 669)).

Diagnosis and definition. See Logunov and Azarkina (2018), whose terminology for components of the male palp we follow.

Remarks. No phylogeny has yet been proposed for Stenaelurillus , nor formal species groups, making it sometimes difficult to choose a focus of diagnostic comparisons for new species. As a provisional guide for identification, however, the species known from the Indian subcontinent can be sorted based on colour pattern. One set of species are primarily black and white, having a white male clypeus, striped carapace, abdomen (usually) with large white spots, and legs with a black background.These include Stenaelurillus albus Sebastian, Sankaran, Malamel & Joseph, 2015 ; S. arambagensis ( Biswas & Biswas, 1992) ; S. belihuloya Logunov & Azarkina, 2018 ; S. gabrieli Prajapati, Murthappa, Sankaran & Sebastian, 2016 ; S. jagannathae Das, Malik & Vidhel, 2015 ; S. mardanicus Ali & Maddison, 2018 ; and S. triguttatus Simon, 1885 . In contrast, a second set of Stenaelurillus in India are distinctive for having a male abdomen with lateral fringes, including Stenaelurillus indicus Logunov, 2020 ; S. metallicus Caleb & Mathai, 2016 and S. sarojinae Caleb & Mathai, 2014 . These species also share a dark male clypeus, a colourful abdomen with spots smaller or absent, legs with a brown to orange background, and a palpal femur with a ventral process located distally near patella. One of the new species described below is among the black and white species, the others among the colourful fringed species. We also report on a new population of S. marusiki .