Missulena insignis

Missulena insignis, commonly known as the lesser red-headed mouse spider, is a species of spider belonging to the family Actinopodidae native to Australia. The species name is derived from the Latin insignis "mark".^[2]

Missulena insignis
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Subphylum:	Chelicerata
Class:	Arachnida
Order:	Araneae
Infraorder:	Mygalomorphae
Family:	Actinopodidae
Genus:	Missulena
Species:	M. insignis
Binomial name
Missulena insignis (O. P-Cambridge, 1877)[1]
Synonyms[1]
Eriodon insigne O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1877 Actinopus formosus Rainbow, 1896 Eriodon semicoccineum Simon, 1896 Eriodon rubrocapitata Rainbow, 1903 Missulena formosa (Rainbow, 1896)

Taxonomy

The species was first described by Octavius Pickard-Cambridge in 1877, as Eriodon insigne. Separately, William Joseph Rainbow described a male collected from Menindie, New South Wales as Actinopus formosus in 1896,^[3] formosus being Latin for "handsome/beautiful". H. Womersley in 1943 regarded Actinopus formosus as a synonym of Missulena occatoria.^[4] Barbara York Main in 1985 treated Actinopus formosus as a synonym of Missulena insignis,^[5] the position adopted by the World Spider Catalog.^[1] She considered that Womersley had partly confused M. occatoria and M. insignis, with M. occatoria only occurring in eastern Australia.^[5] According to Framenau et al., M. occatoria and M. insignis cannot be differentiated based on the original description.^[6]