CEPF Western Ghats Special Series: A new genus of the family Theraphosidae (Araneae: Mygalomorphae) with description of three new species from the Western Ghats of Karnataka, India

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Published: Nov 26, 2012
DOI: https://doi.org/10.11609/JoTT.o3065.3233-54

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M. Siliwal
N. Gupta
R. Raven

Abstract

In this paper, a new genus Neoheterophrictus gen. nov., with three new species, Neoheterophrictus crurofulvus sp. nov., N. sahyadri sp. nov. and N. uttarakannada sp. nov., is described from Uttara Kannada District, Karnataka, India. The new genus is close to Heterophrictus Pocock, 1900 and Plesiophrictus Pocock, 1899 but has multilobed spermathecae, which was consistent in all the three species and the males possessing double tibial spur. Natural history information for all the species described is provided. We transfer Plesiophrictus bhori Gravely, 1915 to Heterophrictus and synonymise P. mahabaleshwari Tikader, 1977 with Heterophrictus milleti Pocock, 1900.

Article Details

Issue
Vol. 4 No. 14 (2012)
Section
Communications

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Author Biographies

M. Siliwal

Manju Siliwal has been working on spiders since 1997. She has specialized on taxonomy of primitive spiders (mygalomorphs including tarantulas) and has described many new species from India. Her main interest lies in taxonomy, ecology and conservation of Indian spiders. Her contribution to this paper is in collecting specimens, identifying the species and preparing the manuscript including taxonomy.

N. Gupta

Neha Gupta is MSc in biodiversity and conser-vation and is very much interested in ecology and conservation of Indian spiders. For her M.Sc. dissertation, she worked on the ecology of trapdoor spiders of the family Idiopidae in Ut-tara Kannada, Karnataka. She was involved in the spider surveys when some of the new species listed in this paper were collected. She also assisted in taking morphometry information for most of the specimens and finalizing illustrations.

R. Raven

Robert Raven is world renowned expert on primitive spiders (mygalomorphs) and has ex-perience of about 40 years in spider taxonomy. He has described 42 genera and 351 species till date from different parts of the world, pre-dominantly from Australia. His contribution to this paper was in finalizing the text, working on language of the paper, reviewing the taxonomy of the species and providing critical inputs on various genera of Theraphosidae.

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