Notes on Indian wolf spiders: IV. Transfer of species previously included in the genera Crocodilosa Caporiacco, 1947 and Geolycosa Montgomery, 1904 (Araneae: Lycosidae)

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  Notes on Indian wolf spiders: IV. Transfer of species previously included in the genera Crocodilosa Caporiacco, 1947 and Geolycosa Montgomery, 1904 (Araneae: Lycosidae) The enigmatic Crocodilosa Caporiacco, 1947 sensu lato currently consists of five nominal species distributed in Africa and Asia (World Spider Catalog 2026). It was established for C. kittenbergeri Caporiacco, 1947, with a superficial generic diagnosis relying only on somatic features such as length of eye rows, leg spination and relative leg lengths (Caporiacco 1947). Roewer (1955), following Caporiacco’s (1947) generic diagnosis, drastically increased the number of Crocodilosa species by transferring several species from other lycosid genera, but most of these subsequently added species were later reassigned to their appropriate genera (World Spider Catalog 2026), highlighting the need for a re-examination of the type species and remaining congeners to clarify the validity of Crocodilosa. At present, the genus ha...

Two new species of burrowing scorpions Urodacus (Scorpiones: Urodacidae) from the Pilbara region of Western Australia with identical external morphology

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Two new species of burrowing scorpions Urodacus (Scorpiones: Urodacidae) from the Pilbara region of Western Australia with identical external morphology


Abstract

Two new species of urodacid scorpions are described from the Pilbara region in Western Australia, where they are both patchily distributed along creek lines in the northeast of the region. Urodacus uncinus sp. nov. and Urodacus lunatus sp. nov. are indistinguishable based on external morphology: adults are medium-sized, yellow burrowing scorpions with remarkable sexual dimorphism in the telson, in which males have a uniquely swollen vesicle and an aculeus that is more strongly curved than other known species of Urodacus. The species are superficially similar to U. similis L.E. Koch, 1977 and U. yaschenkoi Birula, 1903 in the morphology of the first four metasomal segments, which are extremely short and not much longer than high. The two new species can only be discerned from each other based on the morphology of their hemispermatophores, which highlights the extremely conserved morphology of species in the genus and suggests that many new species await description with careful examination of their genitalia.

ZO23018  Accepted 05 October 2023