Neoscona Simon, 1864

Zamani, Alireza, Marusik, Yuri M. & Sestakova, Anna, 2020, On Araniella and Neoscona (Araneae, Araneidae) of the Caucasus, Middle East and Central Asia, ZooKeys 906, pp. 13-40 : 13

Genus Neoscona Simon, 1864

Neoscona Simon, 1864: 261.

Neoscona : Berman and Levi 1971: 469; Grasshoff 1986: 4; Tanikawa 1998: 134.

Type species.

Epeira arabesca Walckenaer, 1841, fixed by F. O. Pickard-Cambridge 1904: 466.

Note.

Simon (1864) proposed this genus for nine species currently considered in Larinioides Caporiacco, 1934, Araneus Clerck, 1757 and Neoscona . Although type species were not fixed for any genera described in Simon’s book [there were no rules for type fixation at that time], the author used the term ‘espèces principales’ (=main species). Simon (1864) considered “L’ épéire scalaire (neoscona)" (= A. marmoreus Clerck, 1757) as the "main species".

Comments.

With 124 valid species ( WSC 2019), Neoscona is the third largest genus in Araneidae . Only Araneus Clerck, 1757 (595 spp.) and Cyclosa Menge, 1866 (180 spp.) are more speciose. At the same time, it has the highest number of synonyms (114) and nomina dubia (10) ( WSC 2019) in comparison to the valid names. The genus has an almost global distribution, unknown only in South America. It is relatively well studied in North America, Africa, China, and Japan due to the revisions by Berman and Levi (1971), Grasshoff (1986), Yin et al. (1997) and Tanikawa (1998), respectively, but remains poorly known in the Central Asia, India, South East Asia and Australia. Although the male palp is rather uniform in shape across the genus, epigynes can be split into two morphotypes, with inflexible scape ( Neoscona s. str.) and with flexible scape ( Afraranea Archer, 1951, a genus currently considered as a synonym of Neoscona in WSC (2019) with reference to Grasshoff (1986), although the latter author considered Afraranea as a subgenus of Neoscona ).

Currently, six species of Neoscona are known in the region: N. adianta (Walckenaer, 1802), N. subfusca (C.L. Koch, 1837), N. theisi (Walckenaer, 1841) (all throughout the region), N. spasskyi (Brignoli, 1983) (Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Iran), N. tedgenica (Bakhvalov, 1978) (Turkmenistan) and N. isatis sp. nov. (Iran).