Eumenophorus murphyorum Smith, 1990

♀ Female described ♂ Male described

Type Locality and Records

Type locality

Original Description

Smith, A. (1990). Baboon Spiders: Tarantulas of Africa and the Middle East. Fitzgerald Publishing, London [p. 77, f. 365a-365k].
PDF

Distribution

Sierra Leone

Etymology

Named after British amateur arachnologists John and Frances Murphy.

Specimen Records (2)

BMNH 30-10-1930 ♂ Type Sierra Leone

Njala, Sierra Leone

1930 · col. E. Hargreaves

BMNH 1-1957 ♀ Type Sierra Leone

River Tonkolili, Sierra Leone

1957 · col. D. Cowen

Taxonomic History

  1. 1990
    Eumenophorus murphyi Smith, 1990
  2. 1990
    Smith (1990) published the name as E. murphyi, a lapsus calami — the species honours two people, the British arachnological couple John A. and Frances M. Murphy, so the epithet must be plural. Schmidt (2003) used murphyorum; Abegg et al. (2016) sought to restore the original spelling. Sherwood, Blick & Ballarin (2025) reject that and maintain murphyorum.

Bibliography (2)

Smith, A. (1990). Baboon Spiders: Tarantulas of Africa and the Middle East. Fitzgerald Publishing, London [p. 77, f. 365a-365k].
PDF
Sherwood, D., Blick, T. & Ballarin, F. (2025). Studies on spider nomenclature IV: additional dubious and unavailable nomina, status of genera with invalid type species, further synonymies, and emendations (Arachnida: Araneae). Revista Ibérica de Aracnología 47: 43-54.
The World Spider Catalogue