First record of the genus Piratula Roewer, 1960 from India, with the description of a new species (Araneae: Lycosidae: Zoicinae)

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First record of the genus Piratula Roewer, 1960 from India, with the description of a new species (Araneae: Lycosidae: Zoicinae)

Roewer (1955) erected the lycosid genus Piratula Roewer, 1960, with Piratula hygrophila (Thorell, 1872) as its type species. Dondale & Redner (1981) synonymised the genus with Pirata Sundevall, 1833. Even though Zyuzin (1985) and Logunov (1992) questioned this synonymy, and argued about the validity of Piratula, they did not formally revalidate the genus. Later, Omelko et al. (2011) resurrected Piratula, and rediagnosed it. Though Breitling (2019, 2021) pointed out the possible synonymy of Piratula with Pirata again, based on a molecular analysis, it has not formally accepted due to the inconsistency in the results based only on COI gene (e.g. Edwards & Bensch 2009; Klopfstein et al. 2016), and the genus is still considered valid. Piratula currently comprises 28 nominal species, most of which were recently transferred from Pirata (Omelko et al. 2011; World Spider Catalog 2025). 

The genus is distributed mainly in Asia, with a few species known from Europe and North America (World Spider Catalog 2025). In this paper, we record Piratula from India for the first time and describe a new species. All measurements are in millimetres (mm). Length of palp and leg segments are presented as follows: total [femur, patella, tibia, metatarsus (except for palp), tarsus]. The distribution map was generated using QGIS 3.34.9 (QGIS Development Team 2023). The specimens examined are deposited at the National Zoological Collections, Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata, India (NZC-ZSI). Abbreviations used in the text. ALE—anterior lateral eye; AME—anterior median eye; do—dorsal; pl—prolateral; PLE—posterior lateral eye; plv—prolateral ventral; PME—posterior median eye; rl—retrolateral; rlv—retrolateral ventral; v—ventral; I–IV—1st to 4th leg. 

We express our gratitude to Dr Dhriti Banerjee, Director of the Zoological Survey of India for her unwavering support and providing necessary facilities for completing this work, and to Mr Chandan Bera, Arachnida section, ZSI, Kolkata for his curatorial assistance. We extend our heartfelt thanks to two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on an earlier version of the manuscript, and to Dr Adalberto J. Santos, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil for his editorial efforts.


Sudhin, P.P., Sankaran, P.M. & Sen, S. (2025) First record of the genus Piratula Roewer, 1960 from India, with the description of a new species (Araneae: Lycosidae: Zoicinae). Zootaxa, 5659 (4), 593–598. https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5659.4.9