New records and species of Theridiosomatidae spiders (Araneae) from the northwest of Argentina

CORRONCA JOSÉ; RUBIO GONZALO; OLIVO VERÓNICA; ARGAÑARAS M.F.

Sao Paulo

Congreso; 17th International Congress of Arachnology; 2007

Theridiosomathidae is represented by very small spiders living almost exclusively in wet or humid, shaded forest habitats. It is chiefly cosmotropical family and consists of 12 genera and the only record of this family published from Argentina was made by Rubio and colleagues in 2005. This family is characterized by the presence of pits on the prolateral margins of the sternum in both sexes, the conformation of the bulb and the route of the reservoir of the male palp; the connate spermathecae and the 4th tibial dorsal trichobothria usually 2 to 4 times longer than the tibial diameter. This aim of this work is to give new records of this spider family to Tucuman and Salta provinces, Argentine and to describe a new species of the Epilineutes genus. The material was collected in the last 5 years in different sites corresponding to agricultural crops plots and Yungas rain forest of the North-West of Argentina using a G-Vac method to collect spider over the vegetation. A total of 125 theridiosomatids spiders were collected corresponding to the following genera: Chthonos sp. from soybean crop plot in Burruyacu, Tucumán province; Ogulnius sp. from strawberry crop plot in Vaqueros, and in Yungas pedemountain of Salta province and a Epilineutes sp. nov. represented by 56 specimens collected in the Yungas mountain forest from El Carmen and San Lorenzo of Salta province. Here, this new species is described and illustrated. Other three immature specimens of a Theridiosomatinae subfamily, maybe another Epilineutes species, were collected in El Carmen, too. All of these records are showing that more Theridiosomatidae genera and species are distributed in our country and we need to do systematic collections. A complete taxonomical revision of this family is a need to know the real diversity of them in Argentina.