Asemonea stella
Asemonea stella is a species of jumping spider in the genus Asemonea that lives in Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania, and has been introduced to Australia. It thrives in a wide range of environments, from open farmland to semi-aquatic vegetation. The spider was first defined in 1980 by Fred Wanless. The spider is small, between long, the female being generally larger than the male. It has a carapace that is pear-shaped and either yellow in the case of the male or green in the case of the female, measuring between in length.The abdomen is whiter, between long and has a distinctive star-shaped pattern on the back. Its copulatory organs help differentiate the species, particularly the furrow on the femoral apophysis of the male palpal bulb and the shallow depression in the middle of the female epigyne. Taxonomy Asemonea stella is an African jumping spider that was first described by Fred Wanless in 1980. He allocated the species to the genus Asemonea, first raised by Octavius Pickard-Cambridge in 1869. The genus is related to Lyssomanes. Molecular analysis demonstrates that the genus is similar to Goleba and Pandisus. In Wayne Maddison's 2015 study of spider phylogenetic classification, the genus Asemonea was the