Stenaelurillus pecten

Stenaelurillus pecten is a species of jumping spider in the genus Stenaelurillus that lives in Botswana and Zambia. It was first described in 2014 by Wanda Wesołowska. The spider is small, with a brown cephalothorax between 2.3 and 3.1 mm in length and a black abdomen between 2.2 and 3.6 mm long. The carapace has a line of brushes around it, formed of white hair. It is distinguished from other members of the genus by the comb-like appendage on the male's palpal bulb, after which the spider gets its name. The female has a distinctive arrangement of the copulatory openings in the epigyne.

Taxonomy
Stenaelurillus pecten was first described by Wanda Wesołowska in 2014. It is one of over 500 species identified by the Polish arachnologist. It was allocated to the genus Stenaelurillus, first raised by Eugène Simon in 886. The genus name relates to the genus name Aelurillus, which itself derives from the Greek word for cat, with the addition of a Greek stem meaning narrow. It was placed in the subtribe Aelurillina in the tribe Aelurillini by Wayne Maddison in 2015, which is itself part of the clade Saltafresia. Two year later, in 2017, It was subsequently grouped with nine other genera of jumping spiders under the name Aelurillines. The species name is the Latin word for comb and recalls the shape of the appendages on the male palpal bulb.

Description
The spider is small. The male has a cephalothorax that measures between 2.3 and 2.8 mm in length and between 1.6 and 2.2 mm in width. It has a dark brown oval carapace that is covered in dense brown hairs. Two stripes of white hairs line the edge which looks like brushes and another two cross the thorax. The abdomen is oval, jet black with long dark bristles, between 2.2 and 2.8 mm long and 1.7 and 2.2 mm wide. The eye field is black, spinnerets brown and legs yellow. The pedipalps are also yellow, covered in dense black hairs. It can be distinguished from other members of the genus by its comb like appendages on the embolus, which is thin and delicate.

The female is very similar to the male. It is similar in size with a cephalothorax between 2.5 and 3.1 mm long and 1.9 and 2.3 mm wide and an abdomen between 3.1 and 3.6 in long and 2.3 and 2.7 mm wide. The abdomen has two white spots towards the back of the spider. As in the similar Stenaelurillus abramovi and Stenaelurillus lesserti, the copulatory openings in the epigyne are close together. However, it is distinguishable from other species by the way that the copulatory openings are closely aligned with each other.

Distribution
The distribution includes both Botswana and Zambia. The holotype was identified near Lusaka, Zambia, based on a specimen collected in 1979. It has also been found near Mumbwa and in the Moremi Game Reserve in Botswana.