Aelurillini: Freyina (Figures 22-32)

The Freyina is a very successful, endemic group of Neotropical salticids. G. B. Edwards has recently published a comprehensive review of this group (Edwards 2015). It is quite possible that the Freyina represent diversification or radiation from a single ancestor transported from Africa to South America by the prevailing east-to-west ocean currents that link the two continents. A similar form of transport, in the Eocene, is thought to account for the introduction of caviomorph rodents and primates to South America, each group descending from a single ancestor (Poux et al. 2006).