New Insight Into the Evolutionary Arms Race Between Spider Egg Sac Pseudoparasitoids and Active Maternal Care by the Spiders

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  New Insight Into the Evolutionary Arms Race Between Spider Egg Sac Pseudoparasitoids and Active Maternal Care by the Spiders ABSTRACT Pseudoparasitoids can lead to high mortality in spider egg sacs, and in some cases, they reduce the reproductive success of a spider female to zero. On the other hand, a species that develops within the spider's egg sac uses a limited resource derived from a single egg sac for its larval development. Therefore, the most crucial behaviour that increases the fitness of free-living pseudoparasitoid females is choosing the best host for their offspring. We analysed various points of the counter-adaptations of the spider egg sac pseudoparasitoid and spiders exhibiting active maternal care, utilising the ichneumonid  Hidryta fusiventris  (Thomson, 1873) and the wolf spider  Pardosa lugubris  (Walckenaer, 1802). We showed that the oviposition decision of  H. fusiventris  is based on the spider's egg sac size and that the fema...

A new Otacilia Thorell, 1897 species from Hubei Province, China (Araneae, Phrurolithidae)

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A new Otacilia Thorell, 1897 species from Hubei Province, China (Araneae, Phrurolithidae)

Otacilia Thorell, 1897, the largest genus of family Phrurolithidae, contains 143 species and is distributed in East Asia and Southeast Asia; amongst them, 120 species were reported in China (Anonymous 2024). The species and studies of Otacilia have accelerated considerably during past decade and reduced the complexity of Otacilia by assigning species to newly-established genera (Liu et al. 2020, Zamani and Marusik 2020, Kamura 2021, Mu and Zhang 2021, Liu et al. 2022, Mu and Zhang 2022, Mu et al. 2022, Mu and Zhang 2023), which greatly promoted the study of Otacilia. Recently, O. khezu Lin & Li, 2024, a eyeless species collected from a cave was described, showing enormous potential for species diversity (Lin et al. 2024). While examining specimens collected from Duheyuan Nature Reserve, one new Otacilia species has been discovered and is described here: Otacilia subshanxi sp. nov.

Guo M, Mu Y, Zhang F (2024) A new Otacilia Thorell, 1897 species from Hubei Province, China (Araneae, Phrurolithidae). Biodiversity Data Journal 12: e137014. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.12.e137014