Arctosa lesserti Reimoser, 1934

Sankaran, Pradeep M., Caleb, John T. D. & Sebastian, Pothalil A., 2021, Revision of Indian wolf spiders: I. Genus Arctosa C. L. Koch, 1847 (Araneae Lycosidae, Tricassinae), Zootaxa 4908 (4), pp. 489-504 : 497-499

Arctosa lesserti Reimoser, 1934

Figs 9–10

Arctosa lesserti Reimoser, 1934: 470 , figs 2–3.

Arctosa mulani — Tikader & Malhotra 1980: 373, figs 247–251 (neotype designation; transfer from Pardosa ; misidentification). Majumder 2005: 26 (misidentification). Lu et al. 2016: 130, figs 1A–H, 2A–D, 3A–D, 12A–B (misidentification).

Type material. Female lectotype (here designated) and male and female paralectotypes from INDIA: Tamil Nadu: Nilgiris: Masinagudi (=Masnigudi) (11°34’19.84’’N, 76°38’33.77’’E), 942 m alt.; Reimoser leg.; 15 October 1934; repository NHM (no register number specified), examined (only females) from photographs .

Diagnosis. Males of A. lesserti seem closely related to the males of Arctosa zhaojingzhaoi Li, 2016 as both share a downwardly directed median apophysis, but can be distinguished from the latter by uniformly thick median apophysis, which is narrow distally in A. zhaojingzhaoi (compare Pan et al. 2016: fig. 2A–B to Lu et al. 2016: fig. 1C–F). Females of A. lesserti closely resemble the females of A. indica as both share oval spermathecae with slender stalks, but can be distinguished from the latter by distally narrowing anterior part of median septum, which is uniform in thickness in A. indica , and pear-shaped epigynal atria, which are circular in A. indica (compare Fig. 10 A–B to Fig. 6 D–E and Lu et al. 2016: fig. 1G).

Description. See Reimoser (1934).

Remarks. The NHM collection has three female specimens in good condition under the name A. lesserti , without any male specimen (Hörweg, pers. comm.). Of the three female specimens, two belong to A. lesserti ( Figs 9 A–B, 10A–B) while the third is of Wadicosa ghatica Kronestedt, 2017 ( Figs 9C , 10C ) (compare Fig. 10C with Kronestedt 2017: fig. 15). The male specimen might be lost, so we could not redescribe it here.

The illustrations and colour images of the epigynum of A. mulani presented in Tikader & Malhotra (1980: fig. 248) and Lu et al. (2016: fig. 1G) respectively do not match the original illustrations of Dyal (1935: fig. 46), but clearly indicate that these authors misidentified specimens that actually belong to A. lesserti (compare Fig. 10 A–B to Tikader & Malhotra 1980: fig. 248; Lu et al. 2016: fig. 1G).

Figures

FIGURE 6. Arctosa indica Tikader & Malhotra, 1980. A–C male allotype, left pedipalp: A ventral, B ventral, enlarged; C retrolateral, enlarged. D–E female holotype, genitalia: D epigynum, ventral, E vulva, dorsal. Scale bars: A, 0.5 mm; B–E, 0.2 mm.

FIGURE 9. A–B Arctosa lesserti Reimoser, 1934. A female lectotype habitus, dorsal. B female paralectotype habitus, dorsal. C Wadicosa ghatica Kronestedt, 2017, female paralectotype from A. lesserti type series, habitus, dorsal. D label from type tube. Scale bars: A–C, 1 mm. © Christoph Hörweg, NHM, Vienna.

FIGURE 10. A–B Arctosa lesserti Reimoser, 1934. A female lectotype epigynum, ventral. B female paralectotype epigynum, ventral. C Wadicosa ghatica Kronestedt, 2017, female paralectotype from A. lesserti type series, epigynum, ventral. Scale bars: 0.1 mm. © Christoph Hörweg, NHM, Vienna.