Hersiliola sternbergsi Marusik & Fet, 2009

Mirshamsi, Omid, Zamani, Alireza & Marusik, Yuri M., 2016, A survey of Hersiliidae (Arachnida: Araneae) of Iran with description of one new genus and two new species, Journal of Natural History (J. Nat. Hist.) 50, pp. 1447-1461 : 1458-1460

Hersiliola sternbergsi Marusik & Fet, 2009

Hersiliola sternbergsi Marusik & Fet, 2009: 86 , figs 1.1, 2.1, 3.2, 4.3, 5.3, 6.4 – 5, 7.7 – 9, 8.2 (♂ ♀).

Hersiliola sternbergsi: Mirshamsi et al., 2013: 348 , fig. 1 (♂).

Comments

Well described by Marusik and Fet (2009).

Records

South Khorasan Province. No new specimens were examined in this study.

Distribution

Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, north-eastern Iran.

Conclusions

According to the literature, the fauna of Hersiliidae in Iran should be considered poorly studied ( Mirshamsi et al. 2013). The first records of these spiders in the Iranian Plateau have been recently provided by Marusik and Fet (2009) and Mirshamsi et al. (2013). Mirshamsi et al. (2013) listed five species from the country, which showed the highest species diversity of Hersiliidae in the Palaearctic region.

Figure 6. Map of the distribution of Bastanius kermanensis sp. nov. (∇), B. foordi (♦), Hersiliola sternbergsi (●), H. macullulata (○), Hersilia talebii sp. nov. (◊), Duninia baehrae (□), D. darvishi (▲) and D. rheimsae (▼) in Iran.

The results of this study increase the number of hersiliids of Iran to eight species in four genera: Bastanius kermanensis sp. nov., B. foordi , Duninia baehrae , D. darvishi , D. rheimsae , Hersilia talebii sp. nov., Hersiliola sternbergsi and H. macullulata (Figure 6).

Although all of the above species are morphologically distinct, the application of molecular markers, such as cytochrome c oxidase, subunit I (COI), may lead to the discovery of more new species of this taxon in this geographic area. Furthermore, considering the fact that comprehensive faunistic studies on spiders in much of the Iranian Plateau and Zagros Mountains have not been conducted, any newly collected material from these regions is therefore valuable and may represent new records or species.