Two new species of Eupalaestrus Pocock, 1901 (Araneae: Theraphosidae) from Southern Brazil and Northeastern Argentina

ABSTRACT

After a morphological analysis of several tarantula specimens of the genus Eupalaestrus, including recently collected specimens from previously unrecorded localities, we herein describe two new species. They differ from congeners by the presence of a large area with spiniform setae between the coxae IV. They differ from each other in general size and in the thickening of the tibia and metatarsus IV. Eupalaestrus crassimetatarsis sp. nov. is distributed in the Brazilian States of Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina, and in Misiones Province in Argentina. Eupalaestrus roccoi sp. nov. is distributed in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. These natural grasslands are under threat from rapidly encroaching arable and livestock farming.

http://www.zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:F1D6F5E1-5B3D-47C0-AEC7-ADDBB97523C3

KEYWORDS:

• Atlantic Forest
• biodiversity
• new tarantulas
• Pampa
• South American grasslands
• taxonomy

Acknowledgements

We thank Dr Renato A. Teixeira (MCTP), Dr Ricardo Ott (MCN), Drs Miguel Simó and Fernando Pérez-Miles (FCE-MY), Dr Luis Pereira (MLP), Dr Adriano B. Kury and Carla Barros (MNRJ), Dr Antonio D. Brescovit (IBSP), Dra Christine Rollard (MNHN), Drs Martin Ramirez and Cristian Grismado (MACN), Dr José Paulo Leite Guadanucci (UNESP), and Dr Ricardo P. da Rocha (MZUSP) for the loan of or giving access to specimens. We also thank Dr Arthur Anker for providing several pictures from the types located in MNHN, Dr Nelson Ferretti for providing some pictures of E. larae, and Gabriela Franzoi Dri for the English revision. Two anonymous reviewers provided valuable comments on the manuscript. Additionally, we thank ICMBIO for the collection permissions (SISBIO: 58268–1/58268–2/69245-1).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) under Grant [131572/2017–2] for LMB, Grant [307704/2017–3] for RB and Grant [309191/2019-0] for AP.