Poecilochroa khodiar ( Patel, 1988 ) 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 : 2854-2855

Poecilochroa khodiar ( Patel, 1988) comb. nov.

Sergiolus khodiarae Patel, 1988: 44 , fig. 1a–d (♀).

Type material

Holotype female from INDIA: Gujarat: Bhavnagar: Khodiyar (= Khodiar ) (16 km west of Bhavnagar ) (21°44ʹ51.86ʹ’ N, 72°05ʹ06.32ʹ’ E; 25 m alt), S.K. Patel leg., 5 October 1979, repository unknown, not examined. The original illustrations of epigyne ( Patel 1988, fig. 1c–d) were used for comparative purpose.

Justification of the transfer

Patel (1988) described S. khodiarae based on a holotype female collected in Gujarat. Even though we were unable to examine the type specimen of this species, which is presumably lost, the original illustrations of the epigyne of this species show that it lacks diagnostic features of Sergiolus (see previous paragraph on H. lamhetaghatensis ); instead, it resembles the species of Poecilochroa Westring, 1874 as illustrated for P. poonaensis ( Tikader, 1982) and P. taeguensis Paik, 1992 : epigyne with a median depression and large, bean-like spermathecae (compare Patel 1988, fig 1c–d with Chatzaki et al. 2002a, figs 10–11; Lissner and Chatzaki 2016, fig. 4A–D; Paik 1992, figs 26–27). Based on these observations, we propose to transfer S. khodiarae to Poecilochroa .

Male. Unknown.

Nomenclatural note

Since the specific epithet of this species is based on the name of the type locality ( Patel 1988), the name is therefore proposed to be modified as khodiar (considering it a noun in apposition), instead of khodiarae as mentioned in the original description.