THE MALE OF PRODIDOMUS RUFUS HENTZ 
(PRODLDOMHLE, ARANEH1) 1 
By Elizabeth B. Bryant 
Museum of Comparative Zoology 
More than a century ago, in 1847, Nicholas M. Hentz, 
one of the first students of American spiders, found a 
spider in a box in a dark cellar in Alabama ; it had such 
unusual characters that he erected a new genus and spe- 
cies for it. Both the generic and specific descriptions 
are brief, but because of the unusual arrangement of the 
eyes, the genus has been recognized and twenty-four 
species from all the warm parts of the world have been 
placed in it. But the genotype specimen has disappeared 
and the species has long evaded collectors. In 1892, Mr. 
N. Banks found a few immature specimens under paper 
in a house in Shrevesport, Louisiana, and published a 
short description of them. These records have been the 
only accounts of the American species until 1936, when 
an adult female was found by Miss Sarah Jones under 
a stone by the road-side near Dallas, Texas. This I de- 
scribed a few months later. Recently, when looking over 
some spiders in the Jones Collection, now at the Museum 
of Comparative Zoology, an adult male was found. This 
specimen was collected in a house at Denton, Texas, the 
4th of December 1946, and is here described as the 
allotype. 
Prodidomus rufus Hentz 
Prodidomus rufus Hentz, Jour. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., 
1847, 5: 466, pi. 30, fig. 4; reprint, 1875, p. 105, pi. 12, fig. 
4, pi. 18, fig. 9. 
Male. Length, 3.0 mm., ceph. 1.7 mm. long, 1.4 mm. 
wide, abd. 1.5 mm. long, 1.0 mm. wide, palpus, 1.9 mm. 
long. 
Cephalo thorax pale yellow, smooth and shining, slightly 
convex, highest between the second coxae, no thoracic 
1 Published with a grant from the Museum of Comparative Zoology at 
Harvard College. 
22 
