Zalmoxis darwinensis Goodnight & Goodnight, 1948

Sharma, Prashant P., Kury, Adriano B. & Giribet, Gonzalo, 2011, Zalmoxidae (Arachnida: Opiliones: Laniatores) of the Paleotropics: a catalogue of Southeast Asian and Indo-Pacific species, Zootaxa 2972, pp. 37-58 : 47

Zalmoxis darwinensis Goodnight & Goodnight, 1948 , restored combination

( Figure 1 c)

Zalmoxis darwinensis Goodnight & Goodnight, 1948 , p. 4–6, figs. 10–11. Zalmoxista darwinensis : Roewer, 1949b, p. 143–144.

Record. *Darwin, Australia, collected February 9–13, 1945 by Borys Malkin.

Remarks. Roewer (1949) differentiated the genus Zalmoxista from Zalmoxis primarily on the basis of the fivesegmented second tarsus, and secondarily on the visibility of the spiracle and shape of the transverse plates, i.e., sulci ("Querfürche"). None of these characters are reliable for distinguishing genera from Zalmoxis , singly or in combination, given the variability of Zalmoxis species ( Goodnight & Goodnight, 1953). Three species were placed in Zalmoxista: Zalmoxis australis ( Sørensen, 1886) , which Roewer (1912) himself had once placed in Zalmoxis ; Zalmoxis darwinensis ( Goodnight & Goodnight, 1948) ; and Zalmoxis tuberculatus ( Goodnight & Goodnight, 1948) . Furthermore, the type species of Zalmoxista, Zalmoxista australis ( Sørensen, 1886) , was subsequently transferred to Samoidae (Pérez-González & Kury, 2007) . Roewer's convention was not universally followed, but it was not formally addressed either. Here we return Zalmoxista darwinensis ( Goodnight & Goodnight, 1948) and Zalmoxista tuberculata ( Goodnight & Goodnight, 1948) to Zalmoxis . In addition to the aforementioned limitations in the characters used to distinguish these species from Zalmoxis , we observe from re-examination of the type material of these two species (ref. Fig. 1 ), as well as recently collected material (by P.P.S.) that Zalmoxis darwinensis Goodnight & Goodnight, 1948 is more closely related to Zalmoxis cardwellensis Forster, 1955 than to New Caledonian Zalmoxis , with respect to both gross morphology and molecular sequence data (Sharma, work in progress).

Figures

FIGURE 1. Zalmoxis Sørensen, 1886, (a) Zalmoxis cardwellensis Forster, 1955, male paratype (AMNH); (b) Zalmoxis cf. cuspanalis (MCZ); (c) Zalmoxis darwinensis Goodnight & Goodnight, 1948, male holotype (AMNH); (d) Zalmoxis jewetti (Goodnight & Goodnight, 1947), male holotype (AMNH); (e) Zalmoxis marchei Roewer, 1912, male holotype (MCZ); (f) Zalmoxis mitobatipes (Roewer, 1926), male paratype (MCZ); (g) Zalmoxis neocaledonicus Roewer, 1912, male holotype (MCZ); (h) Zalmoxis remingtoni (Goodnight & Goodnight, 1948), male holotype (AMNH); (i) Zalmoxis tuberculatus Goodnight & Goodnight, 1948, male paratype (AMNH).