A survey of the East Palaearctic Lycosidae (Aranei). 8. The genera Pirata Sundevall, 1833 and Piratula Roewer, 1960 in the Russian Far East

Abstract

Spiders belonging to Pirata from the Russian Far East have been surveyed and 14 species are illustrated. Morphological analysis of the northern Holarctic species of Pirata revealed that the genus Piratula can be removed from synonymy with Pirata. New diagnoses are provided for the two genera. Species and genus specific characters were surveyed. Twenty-five species occurring in the northern Holarctic are transferred into Piratula and 22 new combinations are established:

Barcode Taxonomy at the Genus Level

“…The genus Piratula was erected by Roewer (1960) based on subtle differences in the eye arrangement. It was rejected by Dondale & Redner (1981) who argued that the type species of Piratula shared important derived characters of the pedipalp with the type species of Pirata, but resurrected by Omelko et al (2011) on the grounds that it showed many differences in the male palps, as well as some differences in sternal patterns and leg spination in females, while also differing in overall size. Both genera are well represented in the barcoding dataset, including data on their respective type species, Pirata piraticus and Piratula hygrophila.…”

A Little Learning Is a Dangerous Thing – On the Usefulness of Barcode Data for Genus-Level Taxonomy

“…While it would be extremely interesting to obtain additional molecular information for a wider sample of members of Pirata s. lat., for the time being a closer look at the characters used by Omelko et al (2011) to support the separation suggests that the morphological evidence is so weak that it would be hard to justify the considerable amount of ad hoc hypotheses that would be required to maintain the two genera as separate clades in the light of the molecular data: according to Omelko et al (2011), the only consistent morphological difference appears to be the presence of a prolateral spine on tibia I in females of Piratula, while all other differences (e.g., differences in total size, in the arrangement of the eyes, in sternum pattern and coloration, and the presence or absence of teeth on the upper arm of the tegular apophysis) apply only to some of the species, and are limited to character systems that are notorious for an extreme degree of homoplasy. The proposed synonymy of Piratula and Pirata (in Breitling 2019a), which had previously already been suggested by Dondale & Redner (1981), seems therefore to be entirely justified by the combined evidence.…”

New data on the wolf spiders of Iran (Aranei: Lycosidae)

“…Pirata piraticus: Omelko et al, 2011: 207, figs 1a, 3a, 6-16, 42-43, 167, 175 COMMENTS: This species has a circum-Holarctic distribution and occurs throughout the Eurasia and the Nearctic [Omelko et al, 2011]. In Iran, it was hitherto recorded from Esfahan, Golestan, Mazandaran, Gilan and West Azerbayjan provinces [Roewer, 1995;Mozaffarian et al, 1998;Ghahari, Marusik, 2009;Kashefi et al, 2012].…”