A new species of the mygalomorph spider genus Euagrus Ausserer (Araneae: Euagridae) from central Mexico and new records of E. gus Coyle from Tlaxcala

Posted by
  A new species of the mygalomorph spider genus Euagrus Ausserer (Araneae: Euagridae) from central Mexico and new records of E. gus Coyle from Tlaxcala Abstract  A new species of the spider genus Euagrus Ausserer, 1875 from temperate pine-oak forests in the states of Tlaxcala and Hidalgo, Mexico is described: E. pulque sp. nov. The description of the new species is based on male and female adult specimens. Additionally, Euagrus gus Coyle, 1988 is recorded for the very first time in the state of Tlaxcala. These species have sympatric distributions in La Malinche National Park, Tlaxcala. With this description, the diversity of the genus increases to 23 species, with Mexico harboring the highest diversity with 17 described species.  Valdez-Mondragón, A., Salinas-Velasco, H. V. & Bueno-Villegas, J. (2026). A new species of the mygalomorph spider genus Euagrus Ausserer (Araneae: Euagridae) from central Mexico and new records of E. gus Coyle from Tlaxcala. Zootaxa 5810 (...

THE CURIOUS LIFE OF A SOCIAL PSEUDOSCORPION

Posted by

 

Paratemnoides nidificator adults and nymphs interacting in and around a cooperatively constructed silken brood chamber. © José Roberto Peruca, 2015 (CC-BY-2.0)

THE CURIOUS LIFE OF A SOCIAL PSEUDOSCORPION

Travelling through Brazil you find yourself in the Cerrado, a vast tropical savannah just southeast of the Amazon rainforest. Stopping under one of the trees, you sit down for a quick rest and to take in the natural beauty around you. Your eye then caches the movement of a fly landing on the rough bark of the tree and, ever ready as you are, you reach for your camera and inch closer to try and take a good macro photo. While getting the insect into focus you notice the fly begins to struggle, though at first you fail to see why. It is then that you notice a myriad of small, scorpion-like pincers emerging from the crevices in the bark around the fly, grasping at it and keeping it from flying away. Then you see the owners of the pincers emerge, one or two at first then more and more as they grow bolder. Before you are tiny creatures that look like a scorpion without its tail, furiously working together trying to subdue the fly before dragging it under the bark where they emerged from. What you have just witnessed is an extremely rare event… cooperative hunting in pseudoscorpions.