A new species of Loxosceles (Araneae, Sicariidae) from Tunisia

Abstract

A new species of the spider genus Loxosceles, L. mrazig sp. n., found in Tunisia is described and illustrated. Th e male bulb shows a high degree of morphological similarity to that of L. gaucho from Brazil, but the proportions of the palpal segments and the general colouration of the body reveal signifi cant diff erences between the two species. A distance analysis of the sequences of the mitochondrial gene cox1 reveals that the specimen from Tunisia shows high genetic distance from L. gaucho (more than 20%). Th e American species L. gaucho and L. laeta form a sister group to the Mediterranean representatives (L. rufescens and the Tunisian specimen).

Global invasion history of the Mediterranean recluse spider: a concordance with human expansion

“…These are in accord with the revised descriptions of L. rufescens by Gertsch () and Gertsch and Ennik (). Ribera and Planas () and our analysis of the COI sequences from GenBank obtain an average genetic distance of over 16.35% for 24 species of Loxosceles . The 347 specimens of L. rufescens from China, Greece, Iran, Israel, Tunisia, Morocco, Spain, United States, and Australia show an average genetic distance for COI of only 2.22%.…”

“…These are in accord with the revised descriptions of L. rufescens by Gertsch (1967) and Gertsch and Ennik (1983). Ribera and Planas (2009) 1, Fig. A2).…”

Description of six new species ofLoxosceles(Araneae: Sicariidae) endemic to the Canary Islands and the utility of DNA barcoding for their fast and accurate identification

“…This character is not present in any L. rufescens s.l. representatives, the sister group to the Canarian clade (Planas & Ribera, ); by contrast, L. mrazig , the other Mediterranean Loxosceles species from Tunisia, exhibits similar dark marks, although smaller and less conspicuous (Ribera & Planas, ). Based on genitalic characters, Gertsch (, ) and Gertsch & Ennik () recognized different species groups, which were recovered as monophyletic in a phylogenetic study conducted with molecular data (Binford et al ., ).…”

“…A total of 40 adult specimens was examined following Ribera & Planas (2009). All morphological measurements are given in millimetres.…”

“…1; Planas & Ribera, 2014). Loxosceles comprises 107 species (Platnick, 2014) distributed predominantly in temperate and tropical areas in North, Central, and South America (Gertsch, 1967;Gertsch & Ennik, 1983;Binford et al, 2008), although some species are located in Africa (Lotz, 2012) and two in the Mediterranean basin (Ribera & Planas, 2009;Duncan et al, 2010). This diversity is strongly biased towards those areas where extensive taxonomic revisions have been conducted (e.g.…”