A new species and two new synonyms in the genus Plexippus C.L. Koch, 1846 from India (Araneae: Salticidae: Plexippina)

Abstract

The remaining three Indian species -P. andamanensis (Tikader, 1977), P. calcutaensis (Tikader, 1974) and P. redimitus Simon, 1902 -are poorly known and have recently been categorized as 'unrecognizable species', species inquirenda [Prószyński, 2017; WSC, 2022]. The taxonomic status of P. andamanensis and P. calcutaensis is discussed in the present paper, while that of P. redimitus still remains to be further resolved. Like several other Indian salticids, P. andamanensis and P. calcutaensis were both originally described in Marpissa C.L. Koch, 1846[Tikader, 1974, 1977 and then transferred to Plexippus [Nenilin, 1984a,b]. The present paper deals with the description of a new Plexippus species from Karnataka state, India and clarification on the taxonomic status of P. andamanensis and P. calcutaensis. Materials and methodsLive specimen was photographed with a Nikon D850 DSLR camera with a Nikkor 105 mm macro lens, illuminated by a Godox 860ii flash light with a diffuser. The specimen was hand-collected and preserved in 70% ethanol. A morphological examination of P. ignatius sp.n. was carried out under a Leica SAPO stereomicroscope and micrographs were taken with a Leica MC190 HD camera and processed with the Leica Application Suite (LAS) version 4.13. The type specimens from ZSI, Kolkata were examined under a Leica EZ4 HD stereomicroscope and micrographs were taken with a Leica DFC500 HD camera attached to Leica M205 ABSTRACT. A new jumping spider species, Plexippus ignatius Caleb sp.n. (#), is described from Karnataka state, India. Two new synonyms are proposed: Plexippus andamanensis (Tikader, 1977) syn.n. and P. calcutaensis (Tikader, 1974) syn.n., are junior synonyms of P. paykulli (Audouin, 1826) and P. petersi (Karsch, 1878) respectively. A detailed description and illustrations of the studied specimens are provided.

Rediscovery of <I>Evarcha pulchella</I> (Thorell 1895) (Araneae: Salticidae), with the first record for India

“…The jumping spider genus Evarcha was erected by Simon (1902). Presently, the genus houses 94 valid species, of which two are recorded from India: (1) Evarcha flavocincta (C. L. Koch 1846) from West Bengal (Roy et al 2014;Dhali, Saha and Raychaudhuri 2017;Tyagi et al 2019); Manipur (Caleb 2023) and Odisha (Prasad et al 2022), and (2) Evarcha pococki Zabka 1985 from Kerala and Andaman Island (Malamel 2018;Caleb et al 2022). Thorell (1895) described Ergane pulchella Thorell 1895 from Tharrawady, Burma (now Myanmar) based on two male specimens.…”