Anahita Karsch 1879

Jäger, Peter, 2012, Asian species of the genera Anahita Karsch 1879, Ctenus Walckenaer 1805 and Amauropelma Raven, Stumkat & Gray 2001 (Arachnida: Araneae: Ctenidae), Zootaxa 3429 (1), pp. 1-63 : 5

Anahita Karsch 1879

The genus Anahita was described by Karsch (1879) for a single species, A. fauna Karsch 1879 . Since then, three species with similar copulatory organs have been assigned to the genus: A. punctulata (Hentz 1844) by Simon (1897: 121), A. maolan Zhu, Chen & Song 1999 by Song et al. (1999) and A. samplexa Yin, Tang & Gong 2000 described by Yin et al. (2000). One species is recognised as new to science and is described below. Moreover, four species are transferred from Ctenus to Anahita , according to the broader definition of the genus used by Benoit (1977) or Silva-Dávila (2003). Surprisingly, there is no illustration of the internal duct system of A. fauna females (Ono, in litt.), even not in the phylogenetic approach of Silva-Dávila (2003), although this species represents the type species. Additionally, it seems that the internal and external structures of Anahita spp. have been misunderstood. For example, Yin et al. (2000) referred to a “connective tube between spermatheca and copulatory pore” in their description of the dead-end appendage arising from the posteriorly situated spermathecae. Therefore, the female of A. fauna is illustrated to provide a comparison to other species.