Afraflacilla venustula

Afraflacilla venustula, the Ndumo Afraflacilla Jumping Spider, is a species of jumping spider in the genus Afraflacilla that lives in South Africa. The spider was first described in 2009 by Wanda Wesołowska and Charles Haddad. Originally allocated to the genus Pseudicius, it was moved to its current name by Jerzy Prószyński in 2016. The spider is small, with a carapace that is between 1.7 and 2.0 mm long and an abdomen between 1.8 and 2.5 mm long. The male is larger than the female. The carapace is light brown, although some males are darker, with a black eye field. The male abdomen is black with a pattern of four pairs of white spots, like Pseudicius sengwaensis. The female abdomen is yellowish with four brown spots. The legs are generally yellow, apart from the front pair on the male, which are brown, longer and stouter. The male also has a distinctive bulbous shape to its palpal bulb and a longer embolus than related species.

Taxonomy
Afraflacilla venustula is a jumping spider that was first described by Wanda Wesołowska and Charles Haddad in 2009. It is one of over 500 species identified by Wesołowska during her career, leading her to be one of the most prolific scientists in the field. They originally allocated the species to the genus Pseudicius with the name Pseudicius venustulus. First circumscribed by Eugène Simon in 1885, the genus is named after two Greek words that can be translated false and honest. The genus is a member of the tribe Heliophaninae, which is ubiquitous across most continents of the world. Wayne Maddison renamed the tribe Chrysillini in 2015. The tribe is a member of the clade Saltafresia within the subfamily Salticoida.

A year later, in 2016, Jerzy Prószyński moved the species to the genus Afraflacilla on the basis of the shape of the copulatory organs. It was one of more than 40 species that were transferred between the two genera at the time. Afraflacilla had been circumscribed by Lucien Betland and Jacques Millot in 1941. It is also a member of the tribe Chrysillini. Prószyński allocated the genus to the Pseudiciines group of genera in 2017, which was named after the genus Pseudicius. They can be distinguished from other jumping spiders by their flattened and elongated body and characteristic colour patterns. The species is named after a Latin word that can be translated pretty. It is also known as the Ndumo Afraflacilla Jumping Spider.

Description
Afraflacilla venustula is a small spider with an elongated shape. The female has a carapace that is between 1.7 and 1.8 mm long and 1.1 and 1.2 mm wide. Flattened, it is light brown with a covering of thin colourless hairs. The eye field is black with a few brown bristles and white scales around the eyes themselves. The spider has yellow to brown mouthparts, including its chelicerae, labium and maxilae The underside of the carapace, or sternum, is also yellow to brown. The abdomen is between 1.8 and 2.0 mm long and 1.1 and 1.3 mm wide. It is elongated and has a yellowish topside covered with brown and whitish hairs and a pattern of four brown spots. The spinnerets are dark and the legs are yellow. It has an oval epigyne that has two rounded depressions to the front and two pouches to the rear. The copulatory openings lead to wide complex insemination ducts and relatively small spermathecae.

The male is very similar to the female, but has a similar pattern on its abdomen to Pseudicius sengwaensis. The carapace is similar in size measuring between 1.7 and 2.0 mm long and 1.2 and 1.3 mm wide while the abdomen is larger, between 2.0 and 2.5 mm long and 1.1 and 1.4 mm wide. The carapace is generally a darker brown but is otherwise similar. Some examples have a lighter carapace like the female. The mouthparts are similar to the male. The abdomen has a pattern of four pairs of white spots on a black background. The first pair of legs is stouter than the others with a swollen tibia. They are brown. The remainder are yellow like the female. The pedipalps are yellow or brown. The spider has a short tibia with three apophyses, or appendages. The spider has a distinctive palpal bulb with noticeable bulbous appendages in the middle and a long thin embolus.

The species is similar to others in the genus, many of which were also previously allocated to the genus Pseudicius. For example, both the female and male are closely related to Afraflacilla altera and Afraflacilla elegans and the male to Afraflacilla karinae. A study of the design of the copulatory organs enables the species to be identified. For example, the male being distinguished from Afraflacilla altera by the presence of three, rather than two, tibial apophyses, and the female by the way that the pouches on the epigyne are near the central furrow rather than the gonopores. The male also differs from Afraflacilla imitator in the shape of the palpal bulb and the longer embolus while the female has longer insemination ducts and shorter accessory glands.

Behaviour
Jumping spiders rarely use webs and instead use their good eyesight to hunt prey. Afraflacilla venustula spiders are particularly active in the early and mid-morning, and mid-afternoon. They create silk cocoons. Males were often observed sharing cocoons with subadult females. Females were known to stay with the egg sacs until the babies emerged from their eggs. The spiders use visual displays during courtship and transmits vibratory signals through silk to communicate to other spiders.

Distribution and habitat
Afraflacilla venustula lives in South Africa. The holotype was found in Ndumo Game Reserve in 2005. Other examples were also found throughout the reserve. It lives on the bark of Vachellia xanthophloea trees.