A chelicera-bearing arthropod reveals the Cambrian origin of chelicerates

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  A chelicera-bearing arthropod reveals the Cambrian origin of chelicerates Abstract Chelicerata is a megadiverse (over 120,000 species) arthropod clade that includes familiar taxa of profound ecological and economic importance, such as scorpions, spiders and mites 1 . Extant chelicerates share a unique anatomical character, the chelicerae—feeding first appendages terminated by a simple pincer-like chela 2 . The fossil record of these primarily predatory animals spans almost 500 million years 3 , suggesting a likely yet undocumented origin during the Cambrian Explosion. Artiopods 4 , 5 , 6 , megacheirans 4 , 7 , 8 , 9 , habeliids 10 , 11 , 12 , 13  and mollisoniids 14 , 15  have been considered Cambrian stem- or crown-group chelicerates, but they all lack unequivocal chelicerae, leaving the emergence of chelicerae-bearing arthropods unclear. Here we describe  Megachelicerax cousteaui  gen. et sp. nov., a large soft-bodied arthropod from the middle Cambrian of Ut...

Heteropoda lebar sp. nov.: a new species from the highlands in Pahang State, Malaysia (Sparassidae, Heteropodinae) with a distinct sexual colour dimorphism

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Heteropoda lebar sp. nov.: a new species from the highlands in Pahang State, Malaysia (Sparassidae, Heteropodinae) with a distinct sexual colour dimorphism

Abstract

Background

The genus Heteropoda Latreille, 1804, is ranked as the second within the family Sparassidae Bertkau, 1872. Up to now, sixteen species of this genus have been described from Malaysia.

New information

A new species of this genus in the highlands of Pahang State, Malaysia is described under the name of H. lebar sp. nov.. Individuals of the new species live in primary forests on forest floor, active in the night on the leaf litter.


Chen W, Jäger P, Zhu Y, Yu L, Zhang H (2024) Heteropoda lebar sp. nov.: a new species from the highlands in Pahang State, Malaysia (Sparassidae, Heteropodinae) with a distinct sexual colour dimorphism. Biodiversity Data Journal 12: e125745. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.12.e125745