Sobasina Simon, 1898

Zhang, Jun-Xia & Maddison, Wayne P., 2012, New euophryine jumping spiders from Papua New Guinea (Araneae: Salticidae: Euophryinae) 3491, Zootaxa 3491, pp. 1-74 : 42

Genus Sobasina Simon, 1898

Ant-like jumping spiders. Wanless (1978) revised the genus and indicated that it is distinctive from the other Oriental ant-like salticids by the structure of the genitalia, the strongly recurved anterior eye row in frontal view, the scalloped sternum, and the elongate coxa and trochanter of the first leg. Another ant-like salticid genus, Paraharmochirus Szombathy, 1915 from Papua New Guinea shares some similarities to Sobasina , such as the scalloped sternum, the elongate coxa and trochanter of the first leg, and the presence of punctures on the carapace. But Sobasina can be distinguished from it by the elongate carapace which is not strongly convex at PLEs, the short embolus, the absence of the retrolateral sperm duct loop in the male palp, the absence of a window in the epigynum, and the indistinctive spermatheca.

Placement of Sobasina in the subfamily Euophryinae is based on unpublished molecular data. Fourteen species of this genus have been described from the Pacific Islands and Malaysia ( Wanless 1978; Berry et al. 1998; Edmunds & Prószyṅski 2001; Platnick 2012). One new species from Papua New Guinea is described here.