Philodromidae, Thorell, 1870

Paquin, Pierre, Vink, Cor J., Dupérré, Nadine, Sirvid, Phil J. & Court, David J., 2008, Nomina dubia and faunistic issues with New Zealand spiders (Araneae), Insecta Mundi 2008 (46), pp. 1-6 : 2

Philodromidae

Philodromus rubrofrontus Urquhart 1891: 179 , no illustration. Nomen dubium.

Urquhart described four species that he placed in Philodromus Walckenaer 1826 : P. ambarus Urquhart 1885 , P. sphaeroides Urquhart 1885 , P. ovatus Urquhart 1887 , and P. rubrofrontus Urquhart 1891 . Philodromus ovatus has been transferred to Diaea Thorell 1869 and synonymised under Diaea albolimbata L. Koch 1875 by Bryant (1933) (as D. albomaculata , lapsus). Upon examination of type specimens, she also transferred P. ambarus and P. sphaeroides to Diaea , but did not treat P. rubrofrontus . It seems likely that Bryant did not transfer the species to Diaea because the type specimen was not available to her or had already been lost. Urquhart’s description of P. rubrofrontus is long but does not include illustrations and, unfortunately, it is not sufficient to recognize the species. However, the description of the legs and cephalothorax along with the predominantly green coloration indicate that it is not a member of the Philodromidae (as defined by Jocqué and Dippenaar-Schoeman 2007). It is very likely that it is a species of Diaea , given that Urquhart regarded this species as congeneric with his other Philodromus species and these have subsequently all been transferred to Diaea . All of Urquhart’s existing types are in the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, New Zealand (CMNZ) ( Court and Forster 1988; Nicholls et al. 2000). However Hann (1994) and Millidge (1988) reported that some of Urquhart types were at the Otago Museum, Dunedin, New Zealand (OMNZ). This appears to be an error as Nicholls et al. (2000) listed all the CMNZ types, which included the Urquhart types mentioned by Hann (1994) and Millidge (1988). The reason behind this error is unknown, but we have verified that the type of P. rubrofrontus is not present in OMNZ. The type list of Nicholls et al. (2000) does not include P. rubrofrontus , which corroborates our failure to locate the type in CMNZ. Based on this information, we have reached the following conclusions: (1) P. rubrofrontus likely belongs in Diaea ; (2) the original description does not allow us to recognize the species; (3) the type is lost and it is unlikely that the species will ever be recognized; (4) aside from listings in catalogues (e.g. Parrott 1946), the name has not been used since the original description; (5) Philodromus rubrofrontus is best considered a nomen dubium; (6) thus, there are no Philodromidae in New Zealand.