Neaetha bulawayoensis

Neaetha bulawayoensis is a medium-sized spider. It has a body that is divided into two main parts: a cephalothorax and an abdomen. The male has a carapace, the hard upper part of the cephalothorax, that is between 2 and 2.7 mm (0.08 and 0.11 in) in length and between 1.7 and 2.2 mm (0.07 and 0.09 in) in width. It is a dark brown oval, moderately high, with stripes of white hairs near the back. In some instances the spider has a wide white band down the middle of its carapace. The black eye field is covered in white hairs, with brown bristles near the eyes themselves. The underside, or sternum, is blackish. There is a characteristic black and white pattern on the high clypeus, the area under its eyes. The chelicerae are black with distinctive rows of white hairs on them while rest of the mouthparts, the labium and maxillae, are blackish. The male has an abdomen that ranges between 2.2 and 2.5 mm (0.10 in) in length and between 1.2 and 1.9 mm (0.05 and 0.07 in) in width. It is generally brownish with a pattern on top of two white streaks near the front, a scattering of triangular patches in the middle and round spots to the rear. The underside is paler and is marked with a large grey patch. The spider's rear spinnerets are darker than those to the front. Its front legs are black and both longer and wider than the other. …

Neaetha bulawayoensis has been observed in Lesotho, South Africa, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. The first specimen were found in Zimbabwe. The holotype was a male discovered in Bulawayo in 1962. The first example to be found in Uganda was discovered near Kampala in 1996. The first example from Lesotho was found in 2003 in a Eucalyptus tree. In 2006, the spider of the species was seen in the Ndumo Game Reserve, South Africa living on a Vachellia xanthophloea tree. It has been subsequently found in other parts of South Africa and is recognised as one of the most common and most widespread ground-dwelling jumping spiders in central South Africa. As well as in the wild, the spider has also been seen in houses.

Neaetha bulawayoensis is a species of jumping spider, a member of the family Salticidae. The species was first described by the arachnologist Wanda Wesołowska in 2000 with the name Pellenes bulawayoensis. Wesołowska allocated the spider to the genus Pellenes, which had been first circumscribed in 1876 by Eugène Simon. In 2000, Dmitri Logunov and Yuri Marusik divided the genus Pellenes into four subgenera, based on the shape of the male palpal bulb. The species was allocated to the subgenus Pelmultus. In 2024, Guilherme Azevedo, Marshal Hedin and Wayne Maddison moved the species to the genus Neaetha based on its physiology. The species in Neaetha are hard to distinguish, leading to Barbara Patoleta and Marek Żabka suggesting that to understand the relationships between the different species it is required to study the genes of the spiders rather than their physical attributes. A DNA analysis study undertaken by Maddison and Hedin identified that the genus is most closely related to the genus Salticus. The genus had been placed in the subtribe Harmochirina in the tribe Plexippini by Maddison in 2015. It was allocated to the clade Saltafresia. The subtribe is divided into harmochirines and pellenines, and the genus is allocated to the latter group, which is characterised by the way that the spiders live on open sunny ground. …