Taxonomic Revision and Cladistic Analysis of Psalistops Simon, 1889 and Trichopelma Simon, 1888 (Araneae, Barychelidae)

• Ano de defesa: 2018
• Autor(a) principal: Stasi, Andre Mori di
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Biblioteca Digitais de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Palavras-chave em Português: Aranha; Mygalomorphae; Neotropical; Sistemática; Spider; Systematics; Trichopelmatinae; Trichopelmatinae.
• Link de acesso: http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/38/38131/tde-05062018-115252/

Barychelidae is a family of mygalomorph spiders that has been typically considered as consisting of three subfamilies (Barychelinae, Sasoninae and Trichopelmatinae). The subfamily Trichopelmatinae, however, has also been considered as potentially belonging to Theraphosidae. Lack of information about this subfamily has compounded many problems in the understanding of its systematic standing. Therefore, a taxonomic revision and cladistics analysis of the subfamily is presented, vying to resolve the relationships within this group. The study also aims to: redescribe the type material, provide pictures for the type material, analyze specimens from several collections, and possibly describing new species and/or unknown male or female individuals, and develop a taxonomic key of Trichopelmatinae. A cladistics analysis was performed, including all the species of Trichopelmatinae, in addition to some species of Barychelidae, Theraphosidae, Paratropididae and Nemesiidae. The data matrix with 60 taxa and 95 characters was analyzed with implied character weighting, in which six different values of concavities (k) were used. The chosen cladogram was the one obtained with the values of k for 4, 5 and 6, as they showed the shortest cladogram length and highest fit number. The results presented show that Trichopelmatinae is a monophyletic group, which is now comprised of three genera (Psalistops Simon, 1889, Reichlingia (Rudloff, 2001) and Trichopelma Simon, 1888). Additionally, Trichopelmatinae are herein transferred to Theraphosidae. Several species are synonymized: P. montigena Simon, 1889, P. tigrinus Simon, 1889 and P. zonatus Simon, 1889 with P. melanopygius Simon, 1889; T. corozalis (Petrunkevitch, 1929) with T. insulanum (Petrunkevitch, 1926); P. maculosus Bryant, 1948 with P. fulvus Bryant, 1948; P. opifex (Simon, 1889) and P. solitarius (Simon, 1889) with Schismatothele lineata Karsch, 1879. The following transfers are also done: P. fulvus, P. hispaniolensis Wunderlich, 1988, P. venadensis Valerio, 1986 andP. steini (Simon, 1889) to Trichopelma; P. gasci Maréchal, 1996 to Hapalopus Ausserer, 1875; T. astutum Simon, 1889 to Euthycaelus Simon, 1889; T. maddeni Esposito & Agnarsson, 2014 to Holothele Karsch, 1879; T. flavicomum Simon, 1891 and T. illetabile Simon, 1888 to the subfamily Sasoninae. The species T. illetabile, P. nigrifemuratus Mello-Leitão, 1939, T. spinosum (Franganillo, 1926), T. scopulatum (Fischel, 1927) and T. eucubanum Özdikmen & Demir, 2012 are considered as nomina dubia. Moreover, 1 new species of Psalistops (P. sp. nov. 1) and 11 new species of Trichopelma (T. sp. nov. 1, T. sp. nov. 2, T. sp. nov. 3, T. sp. nov. 4, T. sp. nov. 5, T. sp. nov. 6, T. sp. nov. 7, T. sp. nov. 8, T. sp. nov. 9, T. sp. nov. 10 and T. sp. nov. 11) are described. Both genera have their distribution mapped and new occurrences documented. The results of the analysis showed that the revision of Trichopelmatinae allowed for a better understanding of its systematic standing and also provided with some important information about the families Barychelidae and Theraphosidae. This highlights that a more comprehensive cladistics analysis, with even more representatives from all the included families would potentially help resolve and define better the systematic standing of both families.