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Abstract
The huntsman spider genus Eusparassus Simon, Citation1903 in Eurasia is revised to include 13 valid species. The type species is redescribed, and additional diagnostic characters are presented for the genus. Neotypes are designated for Eusparassus dufouri Simon, Citation1932 from Portugal, and Eusparassus walckenaeri (Audouin, Citation1826) from Egypt to establish their identity. Consequently, Eusparassus kronebergi stat. nov. Denis, Citation1958 from Afghanistan and Eusparassus doriae stat. nov. (Simon, Citation1874) from central Iran, which were considered junior synonyms of E. walckenaeri, are re-established as valid species. Three new combinations are proposed: Eusparassus xerxes (Pocock, Citation1901) comb. nov. from Makran coast in Pakistan and Iran, E. maynardi (Pocock, Citation1901) comb. nov. from Baluchistan in Pakistan and E. pearsoni (Pocock, Citation1901) comb. nov. from Ghats in India (all transferred from the genus Olios Walckenaer, Citation1805). The latter two species are proposed as valid species and are removed from junior synonymy with E. xerxes comb. nov. Lectotypes and paralectotypes are designated for: E. kronebergi stat. nov., Eusparassus maynardi (Pocock, Citation1901) comb. nov. and Eusparassus pearsoni (Pocock, Citation1901) comb. nov. A new synonymy is proposed: Eusparassus nanjiangensis (Hu and Fu, Citation1985) as junior synonym of Eusparassus potanini (Simon, Citation1895) from Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region in China. One new species is described: Eusparassus mesopotamicus sp. nov. (male and female) from Iraq and Iran. New geographical records are presented: Eusparassus pontii Caporiacco, Citation1935 and E. kronebergi stat. nov. are recorded for the first time from India. Eusparassus fuscimanus Denis, Citation1958, Eusparassus oculatus (Kroneberg, 1846) and Eusparassus levantinus Urones, Citation2006 are redescribed using new material. Eusparassus lilus Strand, Citation1907, described from Java, is proposed as nomen dubium because the type material could not be found and no longer seems to exist. Misplaced Olios flavovittatus comb. nov. (Caporiacco, 1935) from Karakoram is transferred from the genus Eusparassus. Almost all the species are redescribed for the first time and illustrations of male and female copulatory organs including intraspecific variations are provided using a large number of specimens.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all of the curators listed in the Material and methods who provided us with valuable material for this study. Furthermore, the first author is grateful to J. Beccaloni (NHM), J. Dunlop (ZMB), C. Rollard (MNHN) and N. Scharff (ZMUC) for their hospitality during his productive visits to these particular collections. He also thanks J. Altmann and S. Bayer for their kind help and support of his research at the Arachnology laboratory, Senckenberg. We are grateful to K. Kunt (Ankara), S. Henriques (Lisbon), D. Kunz (Frankfurt) and V. Hula (Brno) for collecting several fresh specimens for this study. This research received support from the SYNTHESYS Project (http://www.synthesys.info/), which is financed by the European Community Research Infrastructure Action under the FP7 “Capacities” Programme to visit the NHM collection. The first author is also indebted to EDIT (European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy) for their support of this research in the form of a grant to participate in a course and visit ZMUC. We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments on the earlier version of this paper. This study is part of the PhD programme of Majid Moradmand conducted at the Senckenberg Research Institute, which is financially supported by the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology of Iran, which is gratefully acknowledged.