Anoplodactylus digitatus Böhm, 1879

Arango, Claudia P., 2003, Sea spiders (Pycnogonida, Arthropoda) from the Great Barrier Reef, Australia: new species, new records and ecological annotations, Journal of Natural History 37 (22), pp. 2723-2772 : 2750

Anoplodactylus digitatus Böhm, 1879

(figure 10)

Phoxichilidium (Anoplodactylus) digitatum Böhm, 1879: 184–185 , pl. 1, figure 2, 2b.

Anoplodactylus digitatus: Stock, 1965: 28–28 (synonymy and literature); 1992: 94; 1994: 57; Müller, 1992: 164–166, figures 18–26; Child, 1996b: 551–552.

Material examined. Turtle Bay, intertidal in C. prolifera , 14 May 1999, one X. Lucinda jetty, 3 m, one W (coll. Cruz).

Description. Trunk 1.56 mm length, 0.72 width, fully segmented, smooth, crurigers set apart by own diameter, ocular tubercle with a low protuberance on top; abdomen longer than ocular tubercle; proboscis long, four protuberances ventrally on the proboscis of females. Scape one-segmented, as long as proboscis, fingers smooth, curved. Ovigers six-segmented, first segment thick, third segment the longest. Legs long, second coxae of third and fourth legs with long genital spurs in males, in females genital pores on top of low protuberances, a dorsodistal spur bearing a single spine on femur; cement gland a dorsal tube, long; propodus with heel, three heel spines, seven to eight sole spines. Tiny auxiliaries at the base.

Distribution. This is another widely distributed and known species not recorded before from Australia. It is known from the Indo-west Pacific, the West Indies and the Mediterranean Sea, usually from shallow to sublittoral waters.

Remarks. It resembles A. proliferus described below, the differences being a larger size, presence of a distal tubercle in the femur and four instead of two ventral processes in the female proboscis in A. digitatus .