What’s a Spider? Designation of the Neotype for the First Animal Species Ever Described, Araneus angulatus Clerck 1757 (Araneae: Araneidae)

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  What’s a Spider? Designation of the Neotype for the First Animal Species Ever Described, Araneus angulatus Clerck 1757 (Araneae: Araneidae) Abstract We designate a neotype for the Eurasian spider species Araneus angulatus Clerck, 1757, thereby fixing the objective application of the species name, the genus name Araneus Clerck 1757, the family name Araneidae Clerck 1757, and the superfamily name Araneoidea Clerck 1757. By etymology and arachnological tradition, it also unofficially fixes the application of the ordinal name Araneae Clerck 1757 and thus answers the uncontroversial question, “What’s a spider?” A. angulatus also happens to be historically the first animal species ever described because Clerck (1757) has priority over Linnaeus (1758). Neotype designation is justified for three reasons: the syntypes of A. angulatus are lost; “ A. angulatus ” contains significant COI sequence divergence, potentially representing intraspecific variation, misidentifications, or as many...

New taxonomic and faunistic data on the funnel-weavers (Araneae, Agelenidae) of Turkiye and the Caucasus, with five new species

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New taxonomic and faunistic data on the funnel-weavers (Araneae, Agelenidae) of Turkiye and the Caucasus, with five new species

Abstract

New taxonomic and faunistic data on the agelenid spiders of Turkiye and the Caucasus are provided. Five species are described as new to science: Maimuna antalyensis sp. nov. (♂♀; Turkiye: Antalya), Tegenaria ballarini sp. nov. (♂♀; Turkiye: Antalya), T. beyazcika sp. nov. (♂; Turkiye: Antalya), T. egrisiana sp. nov. (♂♀; Georgia: Imereti), and T. hoeferi sp. nov. (♂♀; Armenia: Kotayk). Tegenaria lazarovi Dimitrov, 2020, syn. nov. is proposed as a new junior synonym of T. averni Brignoli, 1978. Persiscape caucasica (Guseinov, Marusik & Koponen, 2005) is newly reported from Armenia, and T. chumachenkoi Kovblyuk & Ponomarev, 2008 is reported for the first time from Turkiye. New distribution records for T. dalmatica Kulczyński, 1906, T. hamid Brignoli, 1978, T. longimana Simon, 1898 and T. percuriosa Brignoli, 1972, and topotype material for T. tekke Brignoli, 1978 are reported. The record of Eratigena fuesslini (Pavesi, 1873) from Turkiye is found to be based on a misidentification, and is herein attributed to T. hamid. The presence of an embolic spine, unknown in any other species of Tegenaria, is documented in T. anhela Brignoli, 1972 for the first time. Photographs are provided for all treated species.

Zamani A, Kaya RS, Marusik YuM (2024) New taxonomic and faunistic data on the funnel-weavers (Araneae, Agelenidae) of Turkiye and the Caucasus, with five new species. ZooKeys 1218: 251-286. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1218.135249