Misumessus is a genus of North American and Caribbean crab spiders first described by Nathan Banks in 1904. They look similar to members of Misumena, but are much spinier.[1] It was considered a monotypic genus until 2017,[2] but its taxonomic standing has been debated throughout the 20th century, first as a synonym of Misumenops,[3] then later as its subgenus.[4] It was raised to genus status in 2008,[5] but has still been confused with similar genera, some of which were only known by character descriptions made by Eugène Simon nearly fifty years earlier.[5]

Misumessus
M. oblongus in Washington D.C.
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Subphylum: Chelicerata
Class: Arachnida
Order: Araneae
Infraorder: Araneomorphae
Family: Thomisidae
Genus: Misumessus
Banks, 1904
Type species
Misumessus oblongus
(Keyserling, 1880)
Species

7, see text.

Species

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As of February 2019 it contains seven species:[6]

References

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  1. ^ Banks, N. (1904). "New genera and species of Nearctic spiders". Journal of the New York Entomological Society. 12: 109–119.
  2. ^ Edwards, G. B. (2017). "Revision of Misumessus (Thomisidae: Thomisinae: Misumenini), with observations on crab spider terminology". Journal of Arachnology. 45 (3): 296–323. doi:10.1636/JoA-S-17-025.1. S2CID 90623800.
  3. ^ Petrunkevitch, A. (1911). "A synonymic index-catalogue of spiders of North, Central and South America with all adjacent islands, Greenland, Bermuda, West Indies, Terra del Fuego, Galapagos, etc". Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. 29.
  4. ^ Schick, R. X. (1965). "The crab spiders of California (Araneae, Thomisidae)". Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. 129: 111.
  5. ^ a b Lehtinen, P. T.; Marusik, Y. M. (2008). "A redefinition of Misumenops F. O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1900 (Araneae, Thomisidae) and review of the New World species". Bulletin of the British Arachnological Society. 14: 173–198.
  6. ^ "Thomisidae". World Spider Catalog. Natural History Museum Bern. Retrieved 2019-02-08.