Tetragnatha sternalis Nicolet, 1849 nomen dubium

Castanheira, Pedro de Souza, Baptista, Renner Luiz Cerqueira & Oliveira, Francisca Samia Martins, 2022, Five new species of the long-jawed orb-weaving spider genus Tetragnatha (Araneae, Tetragnathidae) in South America, with a key to the species from Argentina and Brazil, Evolutionary Systematics 6 (2), pp. 175-210 : 175

Tetragnatha sternalis Nicolet, 1849 nomen dubium

Tetragnatha sternalis Nicolet 1849: 519 (female).

Type-material.

Tetragnatha sternalis : Adult males and females syntypes from several localities in Chile, especially females from Llanquihue province, Nicolet? Coll., MNHN?, presumed lost.

Remarks.

In the same book in which Nicolet (1849) misidentified T. nitens specimens as T. extensa and described T. labialis , he also described three other Tetragnatha from Chile: T. linearis Nicolet, 1849, T. similis Nicolet, 1849 and T. sternalis Nicolet, 1849. From these, only T. similis was accompanied by drawings, illustrating the dorsal habitus and eyes of an apparently immature male specimen, but they are not useful to correctly identify the species (see Nicolet 1849; plate 4, fig. 6). Also, as stated above, Nicolet’s description were succinct and without precise details on chelicerae and genital morphology to allow species identifications.

Sixteen years later, Keyserling (1865) provided good illustrations for specimens from Nova Granada (current Colombia) he identified as T. linearis (see Keyserling 1865; plate 21, fig. 23) and T. similis (see Keyserling 1865; plate 20, figs 21-23). However, Keyserling (page 835) pointed out that the species described in works of Walckenaer, Nicolet, Hentz etc. cannot be determined with certainty, since the descriptions have not included enough characters to provide reliable clues for determining the species. He added that he preferred to apply the old names given by those authors rather than to propose possible superfluous new names to species that could be identical to the old ones. According to his drawings, T. similis sensu Keyserling looks very similar to T. laboriosa and T. linearis sensu Keyserling looks like T. guatemalensis . However, we could not confirm the identity of these specimens as we were not able to find the type-material for these species in MNHN, the same institution housing T. labialis . We consider Tetragnatha linearis , Tetragnatha similis , and Tetragnatha sternalis nomina dubia.