First record of the subfamily Coelotinae in Laos, with review of Coelotinae embolus morphology and description of seven new species from Laos and Vietnam (Araneae, Amaurobiidae)

Abstract

First records of Coelotinae are reported from Laos. Five new species of the genus Draconarius are described from the northern Luang Nam Tha Province: Draconarius bounnami sp. nov. (male), D. latidens sp. nov. (female), D. postremus sp. nov. (male, female), D. songi sp. nov. (male) and D. tabularis sp. nov. (female). In addition, two new Coelotinae species are described from Vietnam: D. hanoiensis sp. nov. (female) and D. huongsonensis sp. nov. (female). Of the 429 currently valid Coelotinae species, 154 of them have only females described (36%). The embolus characteristics of those with males described (275 species, 64%) are reviewed. Two characters have been found that might be informative for the estimation of phylogeny, and their congruence with the current Coelotinae classification system is discussed. One character is the point from which the embolus arises and another is the embolus shape.

Keywords:

• Draconarius
• systematics
• southeast Asia
• Indochina
• Luang Nam Tha Province

Acknowledgements

We thank Norman I. Platnick (AMNH) and Charles E. Griswold (California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco) for discussion of Coelotinae embolus morphology. Mingsheng Zhu (Hebei University, Baoding), Shuqiang Li (Institute of Zoology, Beijing), Zhisheng Zhang (Southwest University, Chongqin) and Xiang Xu (Hunan Normal University, Changsha) read the manuscript and gave critical comments. Norman I. Platnick loaned the Vietnam material studied, which was based upon work supported by the US National Science Foundation under Grant No. 98‐70232 to the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History. The expeditions of P. Jäger to Laos were supported financially by the Eduard Rüppell Expeditionsfond of the Senckenbergische Naturforschende Gesellschaft, Frankfurt, and were partly supported by a donation from the family Rhomberg (Germany) through the BIOPAT programme. Peter Jäger thanks Bounnam Pathoumthong (deceased) (National University of Vientiane) and Vincent Vedel (Galway) for supporting the fieldwork in Laos.