Latouchia fossoria Pocock, 1901

Hao, Long, Yu, Kun & Zhang, Feng, 2025, Description of five new species from southern China, with note on the type species of Latouchia Pocock, 1901 (Araneae, Halonoproctidae), Biodiversity Data Journal 13, pp. e 137852-e 137852 : e137852-

Latouchia fossoria Pocock, 1901

Latouchia fossoria Pocock 1901: 211, pl. 21, fig. 2; Song et al. 1999: 36 figs. 17 A-B (mislabelled, contra 16 Q – R mismatched); Decae and Caranhac 2020: 566, figs. 3, 17–26.

Materials

Type status: Holotype. Occurrence: recordedBy: John David Digues (de) La Touche; Charles Boughey Rickett; sex: female; occurrenceID: 543E007F-431B-5F5B-A738-4433C800255B; Location: country: China; stateProvince: Fujian; county: Nanping; locality: Wuyishan Guadun Village ; Record Level: institutionCode: British Museum of Natural History (BMNH)

Distribution

Known only from the type locality of Fujian, China (Fig. 17 ).

Notes

The L. fossoria Pocock, 1901 was originally described, based on a female specimen collected from Kuatun (117.64 ° E, 27.73 ° N) in Fujian Province, China. The original illustrations of this species consisted solely of the female's ocular area and sternum ( Pocock (1901): pl. 21, figs. 2 and 2 a). Song, Zhu & Chen (1999: figs. 16 Q – R) provided illustrations of the alleged palp of this species, which has been cited as the male description by the World Spider Catalog ( World Spider Catalog 2024). However, the illustrations of the alleged male L. fossoria by Song, Zhu & Chen closely match those of the palp of L. swinhoei illustrated by Pocock (see Pocock (1901): figs. 3 and 3 a), suggesting that the former may be a copy of the latter (Fig. 4). Given the Song, Zhu & Chen cite the right figure numbers from Pocock and as they are not misunderstanding the numbers, we suspect that they have simply reversed the images on the plates, contrary to the intention of the text - the ones said to be (or alleged to be) L. swinhoei Pocock, 1901 (figs. 17 A-B) are actually the ' missing' images for the female holotype of L. fossoria . We believe it is important to highlight this issue, especially considering the significance of L. fossoria as the type species for Latouchia ( Decae and Caranhac 2020) . Therefore, the male of Latouchia fossoria should currently be considered unknown, requiring further investigation and supplementary descriptions in the future.

Figures

Figure 17. The type localities of Latouchia species of China: L. calcicola sp. nov. (1), L. jinyun sp. nov. (2), L. linmufu sp. nov. (3), L. wenchuan sp. nov. (4), L. yaoi sp. nov. (5), L. cornuta (6), L. wenruni (7), L. yuanjingae (8), L. hunanensis (9), L. rufa (10), L. formosensis (11), L. formosensis smithi (12), L. yejiei (13), L. davidi (14), L. fossoria (15) and L. pavlovi (16). The type locality of L. vinhiensis is uncertain.