Haploclastus validus Pocock, 1899

Siliwal, Manju & Raven, Robert, 2010, Taxonomic change of two species in the genus Haploclastus Simon 1892 (Araneae, Theraphosidae), ZooKeys 46 (46), pp. 71-75 : 72

Haploclastus validus Pocock, 1899

Phlogiodes validus Pocock, 1899, p. 748 ; 1900, p. 179.

Phlogiodes robustus Pocock, 1899, p. 748 ; 1900, p. 180. New synonymy.

Remarks. The species Haploclastus validus and H. robustus that were previously under Phlogiodes were first described by Pocock (1899) from two specimens at the Natural History Museum, London. Th ese specimens, a male and female were originally collected by Phipson from Matheran, presently in the State of Maharashtra, India. Pocock (1899) described the male as H. validus and female as H. robustus . Another female specimen collected by Master from Jauli, Satara district, Maharashtra (about 150 km from Matheran) was also identified by Pocock (1900) as H. robustus . Th ese species descriptions do not provide any details on key characters distinguishing the two species, and only make mention of those characters that are attributable to sexual dimorphism, which is now well established in theraphosid spiders (e.g. Dippenaar-Schoeman 2002). In September 2009 one of us (RJR) visited NHM, and examined H. robustus but could not locate the type of H. validus and we assume that specimen is either lost or is deposited in some other European museum. Th ereby, we synonymise H.validus with H. robustus based on the original description ( Pocock 1899).