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

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

Herpyllus goaensis Tikader, 1982: 460 , 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.

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 (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 (b–c) with Chatzaki et al. 2002b, figs 46–47).

Supplementary description

Female (holotype, 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 (b–c)): epigyne with a median sclerotised plate having medio-lateral conical protrusions and posterior invagination ( 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 (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.

Figures

Figure 3. Scotophaeus goaensis comb. nov., female holotype of Herpyllus goaensis (NZC-ZSI-5095/18). (a) habitus, dorsal view. (b) epigyne, ventral view. (c) same, dorsal view. (d) label from type bottle. Scale bars a = 2 mm; b–c = 0.2 mm.