Platythomisus sudeepi Biswas, 1977

Yadav, Swara, Patil, Vinayak & Ismavel, Vijay Anand, 2017, Report of Platythomisusoctomaculatus (C. L. Koch, 1845) and Platythomisussudeepi Biswas, 1977 from India (Araneae, Thomisidae), Biodiversity Data Journal 5, pp. 10294-10294 : 10294

Platythomisus sudeepi Biswas, 1977

Materials

Type status: Other material. Occurrence: recordedBy: S. B. Shelke; individualCount: 1; sex: female; Taxon: scientificName: Platythomisussudeepi Biswas, 1977; kingdom: Animalia; phylum: Arthropoda; class: Arachnida; family: Thomisidae; genus: Platythomisus; taxonRank: species; taxonomicStatus: accepted; Location: continent: Asia; country: India; countryCode: IN; stateProvince: Maharashtra; county: Ratnagiri; locality: Dapoli ; decimalLatitude: 17.747; decimalLongitude: 73.182; Identification: identifiedBy: Vinayak Patil; Event: year: 2013; month: 10; day: 15; Record Level: type: PhysicalObject; institutionID: BNHS; collectionID: Sp; basisOfRecord: PreservedSpecimen

Description

Total length- 8.5 mm; Carapace width- 3.66 mm; Ophisthosoma widest- 3.86 mm; Leg I- 16.45 mm; Leg II- 17.45 mm; Leg III- 11.00 mm; Leg IV- 11.38 mm.

Medium-sized spider. Carapace reddish orange at life, brownish in alcohol, with four conspicuous round black spots forming trapezium, wider posteriorly. All eyes except AME situated on anterior spots. Legs slender, patella to tarsus black, except metatarsus which is yellowish with black dorsal line. Femur I black, proximal half of II, III red, rest black, IV entirely red. Chelicerae short, pale orange; palps black. Maxillae and labium black distally. Abdomen reddish orange with three black transverse bands, the posterior-most being the thickest and widest (Fig. 4a); ventrally black patch upto the spinnerets, laterally red. Spinnerets black (Fig. 4b).

Cephalothorax without hair, glabrous, slightly convex dorsally, narrow anteriorly, wider posteriorly. Sternum sub-triangular, maxillae, labium oval, rebordered. Legs slender, II>I>IV>III. Abdomen dorso-ventrally flat, roughly pentagonal, longer than wide, wider posteriorly, extending beyond dorsum, wrinkled along margins.

Spermathecae oblong, sclerotized, with folds, closer to each other at apex (Fig. 4c); ventrally, epigyne with inverted U-shaped, sclerotized hood ventrally located at spermathecae apex (Fig. 4d).

Remarks

The geographical coordinates (14°28' N, 74°20' E) for location of Castle rock, North Kanara, Karnataka, near Goa border provided for this species in Bastawade et al. (2004) points in the Arabian Sea. The precise coordinates are 15° 23' 39'' N, 74° 20' 11'' E.

The epigynum illustrated in Benjamin et al. (2016) shows kidney-shaped spermathecae versus oblong shape in our specimen, although it position and shape is similar. Our low sample size did not allow studying the range of variation in this species and needs further examination.

Distribution

Known from several localities in the Western Ghats of India and Sri Lanka (Fig. 5, see Introduction).