Karaops gangarie Crews & Harvey, 2011

Crews, Sarah C., 2023, But wait, there's more! Descriptions of new species and undescribed sexes of flattie spiders (Araneae, Selenopidae, Karaops) from Australia, ZooKeys 1150, pp. 1-189 : 1

Karaops gangarie Crews & Harvey, 2011

Fig. 7A-C , Map 3

Karaops gangarie Crews and Harvey 2011: 28, figs 11-14 (♂, ♀, examined).

Diagnosis.

The lateral lobes of the epigyne of Karaops gangarie are conspicuous posteriorly, and there is no excavation along the posterior margin as in K. strayamate sp. nov. ( Crews and Harvey 2011: figs 9, 11). The lateral lobes do not frame the median field as they do in K. monteithi ( Crews and Harvey 2011: fig. 15). In the males, the dRTA is not longer than the vRTA in lateral view as it is in K. strayamate sp. nov. ( Crews and Harvey 2011: figs 13, 14).

Description.

The description of the male and female can be found in Crews and Harvey (2011).

Distribution.

This species is only known from Amos Bay and in the vicinity of Cooktown, on the Cape York Peninsula, northeastern Queensland.

Natural history.

The type locality of Amos Bay occurs in the Daintree-Bloomfield subregion of the Wet Tropics Bioregion. The second locality where the species has been collected is Cooktown in the Starke Coastal Lowlands of the Cape York Peninsula bioregion. Both immediate areas are considered tropical lowland rainforest. Rainfall throughout the year is 1300-3500 mm. The area is threatened by habitat loss, invasive species, and phenomena associated with climate change, like more frequent and larger tropical cyclones and fluctuations in precipitation. The Cape York Peninsula bioregion consists of eucalypt and melaleuca woodlands. Approximately half of the Starke Coastal lowlands are pastoral and other parts of the subregion are used for mining. The hottest months of the year in both Cooktown and Amos Bay occur from November-February, with the coolest months being June-August. The wettest months are from December-April, with the driest May-November. The holotype and paratype male and female were collected in May, a cooler, drier part of the year. The female from Cooktown was collected in January, a time of transition from drier to wetter in the hottest part of the year (Suppl. material 2: table S1). This species has been collected beneath bark in the rainforest.

Discussion.

Karaops gangarie has been collected once in 1973 and once in 2009. Molecular data were able to be obtained from a specimen and indicate that it is the sister taxon to Karaops strayamate in a clade with K. ellenae (no DNA was available for K. monteithi ) which is corroborated by morphological data as being closely related (Suppl. material 1). The two localities where K. gangarie (Fig. 7A-C ) has been collected are only ~ 25 km apart; however, they are in two separate bioregions. The Wet Tropics is a biodiversity hotspot, with many endemic taxa, threatened, and relictual species. The Daintree-Bloomfield subregion is considered an area of special concern because of its high density of threatened species ( Pert et al. 2010).

Figures

Map 3. Species of the Karaops strayamate species group; red = Karaops ellenae, green = Karaops monteithi, light blue = Karaops gangarie, yellow = Karaops strayamate.

Figure 7. Members from the Karaops strayamate species group A Karaops gangarie, holotype female, rainforest near Amos Bay, Queensland (QM S 52315) B Karaops gangarie, paratype female from Cooktown, Queensland (QM S 88003) C Karaops gangarie, paratype male, same data as holotype (QM S 88644) D Karaops ellenae, paratype female, Mount Cooke, Western Australia (WAM T 28043 ex. 93 / 1359) E Karaops ellenae, holotype male, same data as paratype (WAM T 28050 ex. T 93 / 1366) F Karaops monteithi, holotype female, Upper Lankelly Creek, Coen District, Queensland (QM S 61052). Scale bars: 1 mm.