First Record ofRuncinia flavida(Simon, 1881) (Araneae: Thomisidae) in Europe

Abstract

The genus Runcinia Simon, 1875, as redescribed by Dippenaar-Schoeman (1980), comprises around 30 species distributed throughout the Old World (Platnick 2012). Afrotropical and Oriental region are the areas with the greatest species richness (Dippenaar-Schoeman 1983). The only species of Runcinia so far recorded in Europe is Runcinia grammica (C. L. Koch, 1837), a crab-spider from the herbaceous stratum of different types of habitats, widely distributed through southern Europe, North Africa, the Near East and Central Asia. R. grammica has also been recorded from South Africa and St Helena, although it is possible that it was introduced by marine traffic at these locations, or that these reports represent misidentifications (Dippenaar-Schoeman 1983, Dmitri Logunov, personal communication). In the Palaearctic region at least six other Runcinia species have been described: R. acuminata (Thorell, 1881), R. caudata Schenkel, 1963, and R. tarabayevi Marusik & Logunov, 1990 from Asia, R. depressa Simon, 1906 and R. flavida (Simon, 1881) from North Africa, and R. affinis Simon, 1897 from both Asia and North Africa. Although many of these species have distribution areas close to Europe, and many of them could potentially live in existing habitats from this continent (warm and mild natural or anthropogenic grassland areas, as well as dry farmed and irrigated crops; Dippenaar-Schoeman 1983, Chen & Tso 2004, Warui et al. 2005), none of these species has ever been detected in similar European habitats until now, despite the great many Palaearctic spiders that occupy wide regions divided by maritime or terrestrial barriers (Platnick 2012) and the great long-distance dispersion ability of many crab spider generalists inhabiting common habitats (Bonte et al. 2003; Bell et al. 2005). Here, we report the first European record of R. flavida (Simon 1881), previously recorded in Africa and whose nearest location to Europe is in Morocco (reported from Essaouira, Western Morocco by Simon 1909). We also discuss the implications of this discovery.