Hippasa deserticola Simon, 1889

Records: Baghdad, Basrah (Tikader & Malhotra 1980; Najim et al. 2019 [both sub H. pisaurina Pocock, 1900; see “Comment”]; Najim & Al-Hadlag 2022 [sub H. cinerea Simon, 1898; see “Comment”]).

Distribution: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh.

Comment: The Iraqi records of H. pisaurina by Tikader & Malhotra (1980) and Najim et al. (2019) and that of H. cinerea by Najim & Al-Hadlag (2022) are herein attributed to H. deserticola, a species previously reported not far from the Iraqi border in Iran. It has already been suggested by Marusik & Nadolny (2021) that H. pisaurina should most likely be synonymized with H. deserticola due to their almost identical conformation of the epigyne and vulva; also, the range of H. pisaurina (even if it remains a valid species) is otherwise restricted to South Asia. Hippasa cinerea is a junior synonym of H. partita (O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1876), a species unknown outside of Africa.