﻿Notes on two species of Massuria Thorell, 1887 (Arachnida, Araneae, Thomisidae) from China with description of a new species

﻿Abstract Two species assigned to Massuria Thorell, 1887 are reviewed. The female of Massuriabandian Tang & Li, 2010 is described for the first time from Jianfengling National Natural Reserve, Hainan Province, China. The species Diaeasimplex Xu, Han & Li, 2008 is described as a synonym of Massuriabellula Xu, Han & Li, 2008 based on female and male specimens from Guangdong Province, China. Massuriaminsp. nov. described as a new species (female, Fujian Province, China). Detailed illustrations and a distribution map are provided for these three species of Massuria.


Introduction
Based on the combination of morphological and molecular identification methods, approximately 750 new spider species have been reported from China in the last three years (Li 2020;Yao et al. 2021;Liu et al. 2022a, b;Lu et al. 2022). Many new taxa have been discovered, which means that more taxa need to be revised, re-assigned, or supplemented with appropriate identification methods; one such family is the crab spiders Thomisidae Sundevall, 1833. Although there are several recent publications dealing with descriptions of previously unknown sexes of Chinese crab spiders, there are still many species requiring study (Meng et al. 2019;Wang et al. 2020;Lin et al. 2022;Liu et al. 2022b;Zhong et al. 2022).
Massuria was established by Thorell (1887) based on a single female specimen described as M. angulata Thorell, 1887 from Myanmar. Lehtinen (2004) transferred two Pistius species recorded from India to this genus, including M. roonwali (Basu, 1964) and M. sreepanchamii (Tikader, 1962), the latter including the first description of males in this genus. The generic characters were better understood after Ono (2002) and Tang and Li (2010b) described three new species, M. bandian Tang & Li, 2010, M. ovalis Tang & Li, 2010and M. watari Ono, 2002 Currently, there are nine valid species of Massuria recorded from Asia (World Spider Catalog 2023). Six of these species are known from a single sex: four

Materials and methods
Specimens were examined using a SZ6100 stereomicroscope. Both male and female copulatory organs were dissected and examined in 80% ethanol using an Olympus CX43 compound microscope with a KUY NICE CCD camera. Epigynes were cleared with pancreatin solution (Álvarez-Padilla and Hormiga 2007).
The measurements were taken using a stereomicroscope (AxioVision SE64 Rel. 4.8.3) and are given in millimeters. The body lengths of all specimens exclude the chelicerae and spinnerets. Terminology of the male and female genitalia follows Lin et al. (2023). Leg measurements are given as total length (femur, patella, tibia, metatarsus, tarsus (Fig. 5A, C, D) in having a triangular median plate, but differs from it by the carapace lacking dots (vs. present), the slightly parallel copulatory ducts (vs. W-shaped) and the C-shaped spermathecae (vs. fan-shaped) (Fig. 1A, C, D). Male can be easily distinguished from other Massuria species (Xu et al. 2008;Tang and Li 2010b;Lin et al. 2023) by the legs I and II lacking annulations (vs. present), the retrolateral tibial apophysis lacking basal apophysis (vs. present) and the embolus arising from a 3 o'clock (vs. other positions).
Comments. It is noteworthy that the figure of the female of Pistius gangulyi presented by Yaginuma and Wen (1983) agreed well with the specimens known from Guangdong, although they had a female specimen from Hainan as the same as the male records by Tang and Li (2010a). While the holotype female of Massuria bellula Xu, Han & Li, 2008 was collected from the Tai Lung Experimental Station, Hong Kong, China by Ping-wing Chan on 30 June 1999. The male of Diaea simplex Xu, Han & Li, 2008 was also discovered by him a week later from the same locality. The latter is the same species as the first because it has all of the diagnostic features of Massuria: the pentagonal abdomen with distinct submarginal pattern and the male palpal RTA modified into a distal process (Sen et al. 2015). Further examination of the male and female genitalia in this study confirms its synonymy with Diaea simplex Xu, Han & Li, 2008 (compare Fig. 1 with Xu et al. 2008: 14, fig. 1) and the records of Pistius gangulyi from Hainan in Yaginuma and Wen (1983) were misidentified. The species M. bellula should thus be regarded a synonym of D. simplex Xu, Han & Li, 2008. Distribution. Known only from Guangdong, Hainan (Yaginuma and Wen 1983;Tang and Li 2010a) and Hong Kong (Xu et al. 2008), China (Fig. 7).  trict, Jiangshan Town, 25°8'20.68"N, 116°58'53.56"E, 307 m, 1.X.2022, L.F. Wei. leg. (Tho-298, ASM-JGSU).

Massuria min
Etymology. The specific name refers to the Chinese abbreviation for Fujian Province; noun in apposition.
Male. Unknown. Comments. At present, M. ovalis Tang & Li, 2010 is known only from the male in mainland China; therefore, the new species may be conspecific with this species.
Distribution. Known only from the type locality (Fig. 7).
improving the English of the manuscript. We are also grateful to Ling-feng Wei, Yu-hao Zhong (钟宇豪) and Guo Zheng for collecting the specimens and Yuhao Zhong (钟宇皓) for providing exquisite living photos in field work.