Scotophaeus goaensis ( Tikader, 1982 ) Sankaran & Caleb & Sebastian, 2021

Sankaran, Pradeep M., Caleb, John T. D. & Sebastian, Pothalil A., 2021, On the taxonomic validity of Indian ground spiders: IV. Genera Apodrassodes Vellard, 1924, Herpyllus Hentz, 1832 and Sergiolus Simon, 1892 (Araneae: Gnaphosidae), Journal of Natural History 54 (43 - 44), pp. 2839-2857 : 2843-2844

publication ID

https://doi.org/ 10.1080/00222933.2020.1871523

DOI

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5479400

persistent identifier

https://treatment.plazi.org/id/03E487C5-4410-2334-FE8F-9682FDADFA40

treatment provided by

Marcus

scientific name

Scotophaeus goaensis ( Tikader, 1982 )
status

comb. nov.

Scotophaeus goaensis ( Tikader, 1982) View in CoL comb. nov. ( Figure 3 View Figure 3 )

Herpyllus goaensis Tikader, 1982: 460 View in CoL , figs 372–376 (♀). Gajbe 2007: 478, figs 162–166 (♀).

Type material

Holotype female from INDIA: Goa: Caranzalem (15°28ʹ21.39ʹ’ N, 73°48ʹ55.58ʹ’ E, 6 m alt), U.A. Gajbe leg., 18 December 1975, repository NZC-ZSI, Kolkata (5095/18), examined. GoogleMaps

Justification of the transfer

A detailed study of the holotype of H. goaensis revealed that it lacks diagnostic features of Herpyllus Hentz, 1832 in terms both of somatic (such as the patterned abdomen) and genital characters (i.e. epigyne with paired lateral margins, but without anterior margin and vulvae consisting of two elongate tubular spermathecae with basal lobes) ( Platnick and Shadab 1977); instead, it resembles the species of the genus Scotophaeus Simon, 1893 , like S. scutulatus (L. Koch, 1866) : epigyne with large median plate framed by anterior and lateral margins, bilobed spermathecae and long, vertical and coiled copulatory ducts with bulbous tips (compare Figure 3 View Figure 3 (b–c) with Chatzaki et al. 2002b, figs 46–47, Zhang et al. 2003, fig. 1B). Considering these observations, we propose to transfer H. goaensis to Scotophaeus .

Diagnosis

Females of S. goaensis comb. nov. are closely related to the females of S. scutulatus as both share an epigynal plate with lateral protrusions and very similar configuration of the vulva, but can be distinguished from the latter by a wider anterior margin (in S. scutulatus , it has the form of an anterior hood) and by weakly coiled copulatory ducts (strongly coiled in S. scutulatus ) (compare Figure 3 View Figure 3 (b–c) with Chatzaki et al. 2002b, figs 46–47).

Supplementary description

Female (holotype, Figure 3 View Figure 3 (a)). Body length 7.67. Prosoma length 4.13, width 3.02. Opisthosoma length 3.54, width 2.53. Eye sizes and interdistances: ALE 0.19. AME 0.20. PLE 0.18. PME 0.15; AME–AME 0.14. AME–PME 0.28. PME–PLE 0.28. PME–PME 0.21. Length of chelicerae 1.45. Measurements of legs (only I and II). I (right) 8.02 [2.28, 1.64, 1.79, 1.52, 0.79], II (right) 7.51 [2.17, 1.26, 1.55, 1.69, 0.84], III –, IV –. Epigyne ( Figure 3 View Figure 3 (b–c)): epigyne with a median sclerotised plate having medio-lateral conical protrusions and posterior invagination ( Figure 3 View Figure 3 (b)). Copulatory openings small, situated at the middle. Spermathecae long, sac-like, with short S-shaped median ducts bearing globular heads ( Figure 3 View Figure 3 (c)). Fertilisation ducts narrow, converging.

Male. Unknown.

Remarks

The ZSI collection has one glass bottle for this species labelled as ‘holotype’ (5095/18) containing a female specimen in poor condition. The same bottle has a small glass vial containing the dissected epigyne.

Kingdom

Animalia

Phylum

Arthropoda

Class

Arachnida

Order

Araneae

Family

Gnaphosidae

Genus

Scotophaeus

Loc

Scotophaeus goaensis ( Tikader, 1982 )

Sankaran, Pradeep M., Caleb, John T. D. & Sebastian, Pothalil A. 2021
2021
Loc

Herpyllus goaensis

Gajbe UA 2007: 478
Tikader BK 1982: 460
1982
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