Castianeira albopicta Gravely, 1931

Sankaran, Pradeep M., Caleb, John T. D. & Sebastian, Pothalil A., 2019, New synonymies and transfers in Castianeira Keyserling, 1879 (Araneae, Corinnidae, Castianeirinae) from India, Zootaxa 4623 (2), pp. 331-340 : 332-333

Castianeira albopicta Gravely, 1931 , nomen dubium

Fig. 1

Castaneira albopicta Gravely, 1931: 275 (immature/subadult ♀)

Castianeira albopicta: Tikader, 1981: 263 , fig. 13 (subadult ♀); Majumder & Tikader, 1991: 138, figs 287–291 (♀, lapsus).

Type material. Syntypes of C. albopicta (1 immature, 1 subadult ♀) from INDIA: West Bengal: Darjeeling: Peshok (formerly Pashok) (27°04’00.7’’N, 88°23’29.2’’E; 1066 m a.s.l.), leg. F.H. Gravely, 26.V–16.IV.1916; repository NZC-ZSI (5776/H2), examined .

Remarks. The ZSI collection has one glass bottle for this species. It is labelled as ‘type’ (5776/H2) and contains the immature specimen with detached opisthosoma and without legs except the right leg IV. There is a paper strip in the bottle showing ‘All 3 Type specimens sent to Dr. B. K. Tikader, Joint Director, December 1979. (as a loan basis)’. The three type specimens mentioned in this paper strip are the syntype of Castianeira himalayensis Gravely, 1931 and the two syntypes of C. albopicta . We failed to trace the second ‘almost mature female’ specimen, which may either have been lost while being returned from loan or misplaced elsewhere in the collection.

The original description of this species was based on one immature ( Fig. 1A ) and one ‘almost mature female’ specimen, i.e. probably a subadult. The eye arrangement and the colour pattern, particularly with longitudinal striations on the legs of this species, are consistent with the markings of C. zetes . Furthermore, the latter species was recorded from Kalimpong in Darjeeling ( Majumder & Tikader 1991), which is only 32 km away from the type locality of C. albopicta . All these suggest a possible synonymy of C. albopicta with C. zetes . However, at present a synonymy cannot be established, as the syntypes of this species are immature. It is thus safe to consider C. albopicta a nomen dubium.

Majumder and Tikader (1991) described and illustrated a ‘mature female’ of C. albopicta collected from Chota Nagpur in Jharkhand and Vadgam in Gujarat. Since C. albopicta is known only from immature specimens, it is quite surprising that these authors were able to identify mature specimens as C. albopicta , as they were collected from places other than the type locality of C. albopicta (which is ca. 2100 km away from Vadgam and ca. 740 km away from Chota Nagpur). In their description, they mentioned that their ‘ C. albopicta ’ had equisized eyes and a straight PER, which are contradictory to the eye arrangement of Castianeira species that have AMEs considerably larger than other eyes and moderately to slightly procurved PER ( Reiskind 1969; Haddad 2012). Additionally, the figures of the epigyne provided for ‘ C. albopicta ’ deviate from those of typical Castianeira . All these indicate that these authors provided misleading information and their specimen might rather be that of a corinnid genus other than Castianeira .

Figures

FIGURE 1. Castianeira albopicta Gravely, 1931 (NZC-ZSI-5776/H2). A Syntype (immature) specimen habitus, dorsal. B Labels from type bottle. Scale bar: A 0.5 mm.