Hippasa holmerae Thorell, 1895

SANKARAN, PRADEEP M. & CALEB, JOHN T. D., 2023, Notes on Indian wolf spiders: II. Genus Hippasa Simon, 1885 (Araneae: Lycosidae Hippasinae), Zootaxa 5230 (2), pp. 101-152 : 121-122

Hippasa holmerae Thorell, 1895

Figs 15 , 38

Hippasa holmerae Thorell, 1895: 218 (♂ ♀). Gravely 1924: 595, fig. 1I (♀) (for complete list of references, see World Spider Catalog 2022).

Type material. Syntypes ♂ and ♀ from MYANMAR: Tharrawaddy , 21 September 1895, collector unknown, repository NHM (731-732), not examined. Illustrations based on the type of this species given in Tikader & Malhotra (1980: fig. 103–104) are diagnostic and can be used for comparative purpose .

Topotype material examined. MYANMAR: Tharrawaddy , date unknown, collector unknown: 1♂, 2 ♀♀ ( NZC-ZSI 2393 /17) .

Other material examined. CHINA: Yunnan: between Tengyuech and Nan Tien, 1909-1910, J.C. Brown leg.: 1 ♀ ( NZC-ZSI 5166 /H2) .

Diagnosis. Hippasa holmerae are most similar to H. lingxianensis as both share a tegular apophysis with straight anterior and mesal arms in ventral view, hook-shaped embolus, epigynal median plate with a scape and short spermathecal stalks, but males of the former can be separated from the latter by closely spaced anterior and mesal arms of tegular apophysis (vs. widely spaced in H. lingxianensis ), and broad conductor (vs. narrow in H. lingxianensis and females by the scape without lobes (vs. bilobed in H. lingxianensis ), and oval spermathecae (vs. spherical in H. lingxianensis , compare Wang et al. 2015: figs 3A, C–D, 4C, F–G with Wang et al. 2015: figs 5A, C–D, 6D, F–G).

Distribution. Bangladesh, China, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan and India: Manipur, Uttarakhand, West Bengal ( Thorell 1895; Gravely 1924; Li 1966; Yin & Wang 1980; Barrion 1981; Tikader & Malhotra 1980; Tikader & Biswas 1981; Hu 1984; Okuma et al. 1993; Barrion & Litsinger 1995; Biswas & Raychaudhuri 2007; Barrion et al. 2013; Wang et al. 2015; Wang et al. 2021) ( Fig. 38 ).

Remarks. All the above-mentioned material is badly dried off. The specimens were compared with the type of H. holmerae and studied by Tikader & Malhotra (1980). In addition to these, the NZC-ZSI collection has one more glass bottle containing a lot of male and female specimens of unknown locality, with no additional collecting information, and all badly dried off. The specimen illustrated in Wang et al. (2015) and Wang et al. (2021) has short scape of the epigyne, which is very long in the topotype material examined here (compare Fig. 15A–B with Wang et al. 2015: fig. 4F–G; Wang et al. 2021: fig. 23G–H). The record of this species from Sri Lanka ( Barrion & Litsinger 1995) is questionable as there is no mention of the whereabouts of the material from Sri Lanka in any of the available literature reference related to H. holmerae .

Figures

FIGURE 15. Hippasa holmerae Thorell, 1895, genitalia of a topotype female specimen deposited in ZSI (NZC-ZSI 2393/17). A epigyne, ventral view. B vulva, dorsal view. C labels from the bottle. Scale bars: A–B, 0.2 mm.

FIGURE 38. Geographic distribution records of Hippasa holmerae Thorell, 1895 (dot) and Hippasa loundesi Gravely, 1924 (star) in India (Gravely 1924; Tikader & Malhotra 1980; Tikader & Biswas 1981; present data).