Monoblemma muchmorei Shear, 1978

García, Andrés F., Martínez, Leonel & Ahumada-C, Daniela, 2019, A new species of the armored spider genus Caraimatta Lehtinen, 1981 from Colombia (Araneae: Synspermiata: Tetrablemmidae), Zootaxa 4619 (1), pp. 168-176 : 173-174

Monoblemma muchmorei Shear, 1978

Figure 5

M. m. Shear, 1978: 23, f. 51–56 (Dmf); Lehtinen, 1981: 72, f. 316–319; Burger, 2008b: 1083, f. 1b, 3a–c, 11b, g, 12e, 13d.

Material examined: Paratype: female from U.S., Virgin Islands, St. John , 6.VI.1974, W. Muchmore leg. ( AMNH). Examined by photograph .

Discussion. According to the published spider records available in the World Spider Catalog, Neotropical Tetrablemmids occurs from México to Brazil, mainly in soil and leaf litter of dry and humid forests, from 80 to 1000 m a.s.l ( World Spider Catalog, 2019). However, this family seems to have low abundance in inventories of spider communities, sometimes with just one or two individuals collected, as noticed by Bonaldo & Días (2010) from Brazilian Amazon and Edwards & Edwards (2007) in bamboo leaf litter from Puerto Rico. In Colombia, the only official record of a tetrablemmid was given by Shear (1978) who examined 3 males and 10 females of Monoblemma muchmorei collected in Villavicencio (Meta department), in the confluence of the humid forests from the Eastern slopes of Cordillera Oriental mountains and the Eastern plains of the country (Villavicencio-Apure dry forests according to WWF ecoregions system). However, this species was described based on material from Virgin Islands ( U.S.) ( Fig. 5 ).

In this paper, 3 male and 4 female specimens of C. brescoviti sp. nov. were collected in the Colombian Caribbean region from localities close to Montes de María, where some fragments of dry forest (Guajira-Barranquilla xeric scrub WWF ecoregion) and some humid forests (Magdalena-Urabá moist forests WWF ecoregion) still exist ( Fig. 6 ).

Unhappily, the Tropical Dry Forest (TDF) is an endangered ecosystem in Colombia being affected by anthropic activities such as agriculture, logging and livestock ( García et al., 2014). The TDF has been reduced to 3% of its original extension, only 5% of which is included in protected areas of the National System of Protected Areas (Sistema Nacional de Áreas Protegidas-SINAP). The departments in the Caribbean region, Cesar (21.8%), Bolívar (18.4%), Magdalena (12.1%) and Sucre (3.9%) contributes the most to the Colombian TDF coverage ( García et al., 2014, table 8.3), and are potential localities of interest for the discovery of further tetrablemmids.

Finally, although there are several studies about spiders in Colombian TDF ( Cabra-García et al., 2010; Flórez, 1997, 1998, 1999), very few focuse on spider inventories in TDF remnants of the Colombian Caribbean (e.g. Escorcia et al., 2012; Quijano & Martínez, 2015, both for Atlántico department). Because of their similarity to other spider families (e.g. Oonopidae ), many tetrablemmid specimens may have gone unnoticed in biological collections, and we suspect that many new records and species remain to be discovered both in the field and in the local repositories.

Figures

FIGURE 5. Monoblemma muchmorei (AMNH) female paratype from Virgin Islands (U.S.). A. Dorsal view, B. Ventral view. Photographs courtesy of Norman Platnick and Lily Berniker (AMNH).

FIGURE 6. Map showing the distribution of Caraimatta species and Monoblemma muchmorei in America (the detailed area shows the distribution of Caraimatta brescoviti sp. nov. in the tropical dry forest of Caribbean region of Colombia).