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...

Velvet Revolution: integrative taxonomy of South Caucasian Eresus Walckenaer, 1805 (Araneae, Eresidae), with five new species

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Velvet Revolution: integrative taxonomy of South Caucasian Eresus Walckenaer, 1805 (Araneae, Eresidae), with five new species 

Abstract

This study is part of a series devoted to the systematic revision of the velvet spider genus Eresus Walckenaer, 1805 (Araneae: Eresidae) in Western Asia, and represents a milestone toward understanding the biodiversity of this group in the South Caucasus and adjacent territories. Currently, only three species of Eresus are known from the South Caucasus, although the presence of E. kollari Rossi, 1846 is highly questionable. Integrating both morphological data and COI barcoding results, we herein describe and illustrate five new species: E. albimarginatus Seropian and Zamani, sp. nov. (♂), E. deminutus Seropian and Bulbulashvili, sp. nov. (♂), E. gulliver Seropian and Arsenashvili, sp. nov. (♂♀), E. megobroba Seropian and Bulbulashvili, sp. nov. (♂), all from Georgia, and E. tigrani Zamani, Seropian, Zarikian and Szűts, sp. nov. (♂♀) from Armenia and Azerbaijan (Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic). An updated phylogeny, incorporating 23 newly generated sequences, revealed eight distinct maternal lineages, four of which are formally recognized as species-groups. Previous South Caucasian records of E. kollari and E. tristis Kroneberg, 1875 are considered misidentifications and are, therefore, rejected. We provide a map of the known localities of South Caucasian Eresus species, based on examined material and data from social networking platforms.


Seropian, A., Zamani, A., Bulbulashvili, N., Arsenashvili, E., Zarikian, N., & Szűts, T. (2025). Velvet Revolution: Integrative taxonomy of South Caucasian Eresus Walckenaer, 1805 (Araneae, Eresidae), with five new species. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 205(4). https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlaf169