CEPF Western Ghats Special Series: First record of the genus Tigidia Simon, 1892 (Araneae: Barychelidae) from India with description of three new species from the Western Ghats, India

Authors

  • M. Siliwal
  • N. Gupta
  • R.V. Sanap
  • Z.A. Mirza
  • R. Raven

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11609/JoTT.o2874.2229-41

Abstract

Prior to this study the genus Tigidia Simon, 1892 of the Brush-footed Spider family Barychelidae was represented by eight species endemic to Madagascar and Mauritius Islands. The first occurrence of Tigidia in India is reported here with the description of three new species from the Western Ghats, T. sahyadri sp. nov. from Uttara Kannada District, Karnataka; T. nilgiriensis sp. nov. from Kotagiri, Nilgiri District, Tamil Nadu and T. rutilofronis sp. nov. from Maruthamalai, Coimbatore District, Tamil Nadu. This genus is probably a Gondwana relict. Natural history information is provided for all the species.

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 identifying the species and preparing the manuscript including taxonomy of first species and refining descriptions of other two species.

N. Gupta

Neha Gupta is MSc in biodiversity and conservation 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 Uttara Kannada, Karnataka. She found the first specimen of Tigidia from the Western Ghats. She also assisted in finalizing illustrations and text.

R.V. Sanap

Rajesh Sanap is a graduate student interested in the study of mygalomorphs spiders and scorpions. He has described new species of scorpions and trapdoor spiders. His contribution in this paper is in finding the two species of Tigidia from the Western Ghats. He also contributed to this paper in morphometry, preparing illustrations of the latter two species.

Z.A. Mirza

Zeeshan Mirza is a student of Bhavan’s College, Mumbai currently persuing his Bachelors degree in Zoology. He is interested in the study of herpetofauna of the Western Ghats, scorpions and mygalomorph spiders. His contribution to this paper is in the description of latter two species and finalizing the text.

R. Raven

Robert Raven is world renowned expert on primitive spiders (mygalomorphs) and has experience of about 40 years in spider taxonomy. He has described 42 genera and 351 species till date from different parts of the world, predominantly 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 barychelids including Tigidia.

Downloads

Published

26-12-2011

Issue

Vol 3, No 12 (2011)

Section

Articles

License

Authors own the copyright to the articles published in JoTT.  This is indicated explicitly in each publication. The authors grant permission to the publisher Wildlife Information Liaison Development (WILD) Society to publish the article in the Journal of Threatened Taxa. The authors recognize WILD as the original publisher, and to sell hard copies of the Journal and article to any buyer. JoTT is registered under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY), which allows authors to retain copyright ownership.  Under this license the authors allow anyone to download, cite, use the data, modify, reprint, copy and distribute provided the authors and source of publication are credited through appropriate citations (e.g., Son et al. (2016). Bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera) of the southeastern Truong Son Mountains, Quang Ngai Province, Vietnam. Journal of Threatened Taxa 8(7): 8953–8969. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.2785.8.7.8953-8969). Users of the data do not require specific permission from the authors or the publisher.