A new species of Myrmecotypus Pickard-Cambridge spider (Araneae: Corinnidae: Castianeirinae) from the Bolivian orocline, imitating one of the world’s most aggressive ants

Authors

Robert Perger, Colección Boliviana de FaunaFollow
Gonzalo D. Rubio, National Research Council of Argentina (CONICET)Follow

ORCID IDs

R. Perger https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9930-9638

G.D. Rubio https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4223-2980

Date of this Version

4-30-2021

Citation

Perger R, Rubio GD. 2021. A new species of Myrmecotypus Pickard-Cambridge spider (Araneae: Corinnidae: Castianeirinae) from the Bolivian orocline, imitating one of the world’s most aggressive ants. Insecta Mundi 0860: 1–8.

Comments

Copyright held by the author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons, Attribution Non-Commercial License,

Published on April 30, 2021 by Center for Systematic Entomology, Inc. P.O. Box 141874 Gainesville, FL 32614-1874 USA http://centerforsystematicentomology.org/

Abstract

A new species of ant-mimicking spider of the subfamily Castianeirinae, Myrmecotypus rubrofemo­ratus Perger and Rubio, new species (Araneae: Corinnidae), is described from the Pre-Andean area of the Bolivian orocline. Adults of M. rubrofemoratus new species resemble the carpenter ant Camponotus femora­tus Forel, 1907, which is considered one of the most aggressive ants in the world.

The Neotropical castianeirine genus Myrmecotypus Pickard-Cambridge is a group of slender, fast-running spi­ders that includes 11 species (World Spider Catalog 2020). Four species are reported from South America and three from Bolivia: M. iguazu Rubio and Arbino, 2009, M. niger Chickering, 1937, and M. tahyinandu Perger and Rubio, 2020 (Perger and Rubio 2020a).

Potential ant models were proposed for six species of Myrmecotypus (Perger and Rubio 2020a). These forms resemble morphologically specific models of the ant tribes Camponotini and Dolichoderini; all models and mim­ics share a moderately elongated, truncate forebody, short petiole and sub-globose abdomen. Species-specific mimicry is indicated by similarities in body color and the color and distribution of setae (Perger and Rubio 2020a).

In the present study, we describe a new species that closely resembles M. niger but shows, apart from dis­tinct genitalia, differences in externally visible morphology that could be possibly attributed to the selection for mimicry of the carpenter ant Camponotus femoratus (Fabricius, 1804), one of the world’s most aggressive ants.