Zelotes wunderlichi

Blick, Theo, 2017, Zelotes wunderlichi, a replacement name for the preoccupied ground spider Zelotes turcicus Wunderlich, 2011 (Araneae, Gnaphosidae), Zootaxa 4341 (3) : -

Zelotes wunderlichi , a replacement name for the preoccupied ground spider Zelotes turcicus Wunderlich, 2011 ( Araneae , Gnaphosidae )

THEO BLICK1,2

1Callistus – Gemeinschaft für Zoologische & Ökologische Untersuchungen [association for zoological and ecological research], Heidloh 8, 95503 Hummeltal, Germany. E-mail: [e-mail]

2World Spider Catalog, Natural History Museum Bern, Department of Invertebrates, Bernastrasse 15, 3005 Bern, Switzerland In the World Spider Catalog (WSC 2017) the formerly overlooked species Zelotes turcicus Seyyar, Demir & Aktaş, 2010 was recently added. Thus Zelotes turcicus Wunderlich, 2011 is a primary homonym and requires a new name. The author informed Jörg Wunderlich who approved the present author to carry out this formal renaming (without suggesting a new name): for Zelotes turcicus Wunderlich, 2011 the replacement name Zelotes wunderlichi nomen novum is herewith proposed.

The new name is given to honour Jörg Wunderlich, who has been very active since nearly 50 years in extant as well as in fossil arachnology (see WSC 2017 for a bibliography in taxonomy of extant spiders and Marusik 2014 for a biography).

Both species were described from Anatolia ( Turkey) from males only, and their palpal structures are very different ( Seyyar et al. 2010: figs. 1–4; Wunderlich 2011: figs. 111–112). One version of the Turkish spider checklist ( Demir & Seyyar 2017) lists both species, but without commenting on the homonymy; another version ( Bayram et al. 2017) includes only one of the species, Z. turcicus Wunderlich, 2011 .

Wunderlich’s species belongs to the Z. subterraneus group— Z. subterraneus (C. L. Koch, 1833) is the type species of the genus Zelotes , while the species described by Seyyar et al. differs clearly from the generotype and is after Seyyar et al. (2010) most similar to Z. tenuis (L. Koch, 1866) (known from the Mediterranean to the Caucasus, introduced in the USA) and to Z. zekharya Levy, 2009 (described from Israel, recently found on Cyprus) ( Chatzaki & Russell-Smith 2017, WSC 2017).

In the spider family Gnaphosidae two other valid species with the specific epithet wunderlichi are currently included (WSC 2017): Scotognapha wunderlichi Platnick, Ovtsharenko & Murphy, 2001 and Setaphis wunderlichi Platnick & Murphy, 1996 (both from the Canary Islands). Even if the genus Zelotes were to be split in future, it is unlikely, that Z. wunderlichi would be assigned to one of these genera and cause a secondary homonym.

This contribution is a result of the activities of the author for the WSC, supported by the Natural History Museum Bern, Switzerland (curator Christian Kropf). Thanks to him, to Jörg Wunderlich (Hirschberg, Germany), to Jason Dunlop (Berlin, Germany) for the linguistic checking and finally to Yuri Marusik (Magadan, Russia) and to Martín Ramírez (Buenos Aires, Argentina) for their helpful comments.