Titanoecidae, Lehtinen, 1967

Grbić, Gordana, Hänggi, Ambros & Krnjajić, Slobodan, 2021, Spiders (Araneae) Of Subotica Sandland (Serbia): Additional Arguments In Environmental Protection, Acta Zoologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 67 (1), pp. 15-61 : 38-39

Family Titanoecidae

Titanoeca spominima (Taczanowski, 1866)

Material: 18.05.2014 M1 1m; 30.05.2014 M1 1m; 30.05.2014 M2 1m; 13.06.2014 M1 1m; 18.05.2014 M2 1m; 13.06.2014 M2 1m; 18.05.2014 W2 1 f.

Determination: WUNDERLICH 1993, ROBERTS 1998, ALQUIST 2006.

Global distribution: Europe.

Habitat: On sandy ground with scarce vegetation.

Note: WUNDERLICH (1993) described the species Titanoeca psammophila Wunderlich, 1993 , indicating that the species lives mainly on sand. BREITLING et al. (2015) synonymised the species with Titanoeca spominima , even if the original description of T. spominima is very poor and without figures. BREITLING et al. (2015) also noted that sandy dunes and meadows in different regions of Europe are typical habitats for this species. In our material, this species was recorded at the xerophilic steppe vegetation on brown sand (habitat M1), but also in the wet meadow (habitat M2) and in a young wood (habitat W2). Our specimen fit very well to the drawings in WUNDERLICH (1993). No photos of this strikingly coloured species exist, so we add some photos of the male palp and habitus ( Fig. 14 ). In the Red List of species, it is classified as vulnerable ( Sweden), critically endangered ( Czech Republic), endangered ( Germany), but also as near threatened ( Finland).

Figures

Fig. 14. Titanoeca spominima, A–C = male left palp, A = retrolateral, B = prolateral, C = dorsal, D = male habitus. Scale bars: 1 mm for A, 0.5 mm for B–C, 1 mm D