Wadicosa fidelis (O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1872 )

Sankaran, Pradeep M., Caleb, John T. D. & Sebastian, Pothalil A., 2021, Notes on Indian wolf spiders: I. Genus Evippa Simon, 1882 (Araneae: Lycosidae Evippinae), Zootaxa 4975 (1), pp. 159-175 : 169-170

Wadicosa fidelis (O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1872)

Fig. 10

Lycosa fidelis O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1872: 319 .

Wadicosa fidelis Kronestedt & Zyuzin 2009: 818 , figs 1–20 (for complete list of references, see World Spider Catalog 2021). Evippa mandlaensis Gajbe, 2004: 8 , figs 6–9. New synonymy

Type material. E. mandlaensis . Female holotype from INDIA: Madhya Pradesh: Mandla (= Mandala): Narayanganj (22°49’38.41’’N, 80°14’10.73’’E), 431 m alt.; U.A. Gajbe leg.; 23 January 1985; repository NZC-ZSI, Kolkata (no register number specified), examined. W. fidelis . Lectotype male from ‘Palestine’ ( OXUM, collection of O. Pickard-Cambridge: bottle 1572, tube 39), not examined. Kronestedt & Zyuzin (2009) illustrated the male and female genitalia of this species and their female genitalic illustrations ( Kronestedt & Zyuzin 2009: figs 15, 17) were used for comparative purpose.

Justification of the synonymy. Gajbe (2004) described E. mandlaensis based on a female specimen collected in Madhya Pradesh. Detailed examination of the holotype showed no differences between this species and W. fidelis , a widely distributed species, which was previously recorded from India ( Tikader & Malhotra 1980; Lu et al. 2016) (compare Fig. 10B–C with Kronestedt & Zyuzin 2009: figs 15, 17). Thus, we consider E. mandlaensis as a junior synonym of W. fidelis .

Remarks. The NZC-ZSI collection has one glass tube for E. mandlaensis , labeled as ‘holotype’ (Ar-1621) and containing one female specimen in fairly good condition, with broken legs. The same tube has a small glass vial containing the dissected genitalia.

Figures

FIGURE 10. Wadicosa fidelis (O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1872), holotype of Evippa mandlaensis Gajbe, 2004. A female habitus (Ar-1621), dorsal. B–C genitalia: B epigynum, ventral; C vulva, dorsal. D label from type tube. Scale bars: A, 2 mm; B–C, 0.2 mm.