Description of the first cave dwelling species of the spider genus Trilacuna Tong & Li from Iran (Araneae: Oonopidae)

Abstract

A new species of the hard-bodied oonopid genus Trilacuna Tong & Li is described from a cave in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province, southwestern Iran. Trilacuna qarzi sp. nov. is the first troglobiont species known of the genus, and is also the fifth oonopid species to be reported from Iran. Relationships of this new species are briefly discussed in the context of the limits of the genera belonging to the Dysderoides complex.

Highly disjunct and highly infected millipedes – a new cave-dwelling species of Chiraziulus (Diplopoda: Spirostreptida: Cambalidae) from Iran and notes on Laboulbeniales ectoparasites

“…Iran is located in a biogeographically interesting transition area, but the cave-adapted fauna of the country is still poorly known (Malek Hosseini et al 2015). The Zagros Mountains are rich in caves, and many remain unexplored.…”

“…khayyami Hekmatara, Zakšek, Heidari Baladehi &Fišer, 2013 andN. valachicus Dobreanu &Manolache, 1933; one terrestrial isopod, Protracheoniscus gakalicus Kashani, Malek Hosseini & Sadeghi, 2013; one species of goblin spider, Oonopidae, Trilacuna qarzi Malek Hosseini & Grismado, 2015; and two cave fishes, the barb Gara typhlops Bruun & Kaiser, 1944 and the loach Paracobitis smithi Smith, 1976(Esmaeili-Rineh & Sari 2013Hekmatara et al 2013;Kashani et al 2013;Malek Hosseini et al 2015).…”

A checklist of subterranean arthropods of Iran

“…To date, more than 600 spider species of 243 genera and 48 families have been recorded from Iran (Zamani et al 2016). Only a few recent publications deal exclusively with the cave spider fauna of Iran , Malek Hosseini et al 2015a, while in previous reports only scattered records are provided (e.g. Brignoli 1970, Senglet 2008, Moradmand and Jäger 2011 Records: Roodafshan Cave (Tehran Province) , Shirabad Cave (Golestan Province) (present study).…”

Two new species of the genus Trilacuna from Chongqing, China (Araneae, Oonopidae)

“…Grismado et al (2014) re-diagnosed Trilacuna by the loss of the furrow connecting the posterior spiracles in males. However, as already discussed by Grismado et al (2014) and Malek-Hosseini et al (2015), some species, i.e., T. aenobarba (Brignoli, 1978), T. bangla Grismado & Ramírez, 2014, T. hazara Grismado & Ramírez, 2014 and T. qarzi Malek Hosseini & Grismado, 2015, have a shallow groove connecting the spiracles in males; T. diabolica Kranz-Baltensperger, 2011 and T. werni Eichenberger, 2011 have a well-developed furrow connecting the spiracles in males. So far, all known species of Trilacuna have a long postepigastric scutum in the females.…”

“…Subsequently, additional species have been described from Thailand, Malaysia and Sumatra (Eichenberger and Kranz-Baltensperger 2011), Vietnam (Tong and Li 2013), the Himalayan region (Grismado et al 2014), Iran (Malek-Hosseini et al 2015), and Korea (Seo 2017). Currently, the genus Trilacuna comprises 20 species known from Asia (World Spider Catalog 2018).…”