Lictor conjugans

Lictor conjugans is a medium-sized spider with distinctive features. It measures between 5 and 9 mm (0.20 and 0.35 in) in length. The spider's body is divided into two main parts: a rounded cephalothorax and a thinner more oval abdomen. Males of this species have a light brown carapace, the hard upper part of the cephalothorax, that is between 3.2 and 3.5 mm (0.13 and 0.14 in) in length and between 2.6 and 2.8 mm (0.10 and 0.11 in) in width. It has a yellow spot behind its darker brown eye field, which is marked with a pattern that includes a white triangular shape and a white band. There are white lines along the sides. The underside of the cephalothorax, or sternum, is brown, as are its mouthparts, its chelicerae, labium and maxillae. The spider's face, known as the clypeus, is brown and is covered in white hairs. The presence of these white hairs helps distinguish the spider from the related Lictor pavidus. It has a single tooth. The male spider's abdomen is between 2.9 and 3.6 mm (0.11 and 0.14 in) long and between 1.8 and 2.6 mm (0.07 and 0.10 in). The topside is dark with a mottled pattern that is interrupted by a pattern of two white spots, two white bands running down from front to back and a reddish scutum. The underside is contrastingly lighter. The spider's spinnerets are pale yellow with a dark streak on them. Its legs are brown with yellow segments. …

Lictor spiders generally live in Africa and are particularly common in the forests of Central and West Africa. Lictor conjugans is endemic to Ivory Coast. The male holotype was found in the rainforests of the Beki Bosse Matie Classified Forest in the southeast of the country in 1995. Other examples of the species were also found nearby. Like other members of the genus, it is more active at times of greater sunlight, typically during the dry season from December to March. It is amongst the least commonly found of all the members of the genus.

Lictor conjugans is a species of jumping spider, a member of the family Salticidae, that was first described by the arachnologists Tamás Szűts and Rudy Jocqué in 2001. They allocated it to the genus Bacelarella, which itself had been first circumscribed by Lucien Beland and Jacques Millot in 1941, and gave it the name Bacelarella conjugans. In 2008, the genus had been allocated to a clade named the Bacelarella group based on DNA sequencing. This is a subtribe of the tribe Aelurillini in the subclade Simonida in the clade Saltafresia in the subfamily Salticinae. The genus is named in honour of the Portuguese arachnologist Amélia Vaz Duarte Bacelar. The species is named for the Latin word for 'linking' and relates to the way that the species is intermediate between other related species. Wanda Wesołowska and Konrad Wiśniewski circumscribed a new genus in 2023 that they termed Lictor after the Roman civil servants that carried a bundle of rods on their shoulders. The rods recall the bristles on the male spider's palpal tibia. They declared Bacelarella tentativa to be the type species for the genus with the name Lictor conjugans. The new genus is a member of the subtribe Thiratoscirtina n the tribe Aelurillini. Bacelarella conjugans was one of five species moved to the genus at the time based on some similarities in the structure of their copulatory organs. …