Abstract
New taxonomic data for species belonging to Araniella Chamberlin & Ivie, 1942 and Neoscona Simon, 1864 occurring in the Caucasus, Middle East and Central Asia are provided. Three species are described as new to science: A. mithrasp. nov. (♂♀, northwestern, central and southwestern Iran), A. villaniisp. nov. (♂♀, southwestern Iran, eastern Kazakhstan and northern India) and N. isatissp. nov. (♂♀, central Iran). Neoscona spasskyi (Brignoli, 1983) comb. nov., stat. res. is removed from the synonymy of N. tedgenica (Bakhvalov, 1978), redescribed and recorded from Iran and Turkmenistan for the first time. New combinations are established for this species, as well as for Araniella nigromaculata (Schenkel, 1963) comb. nov. (♀, north-central China) (both ex. Araneus). Two new synonymies are proposed: Araniella tbilisiensis Mcheidze, 1997 syn. nov. is synonymized with A. opisthographa (Kulczyński, 1905), and Neoscona sodom Levy, 1998 syn. nov. is synonymized with N. theisi (Walckenaer, 1841); the latter is recorded from Iran, Georgia, and Russia (Northern Caucasus) for the first time.
Highlights
Araneidae Clerck, 1757 with 3072 valid species (WSC 2019) is the third largest family of spiders
Specimens were photographed using an Olympus Camedia E-520 camera attached to an Olympus SZX16 stereomicroscope or to the eye piece of an Olympus BH2 transmission microscope, and a JEOL JSM-5200 scanning electron microscope (SEM) at the Zoological Museum of University of Turku, Finland
Illustrations of internal genitalia were made after clearing them in a 10% KOH aqueous solution
Summary
Araneidae Clerck, 1757 with 3072 valid species (WSC 2019) is the third largest family of spiders. At least in the Palaearctic, it is the best-studied family of spiders due to numerous publications dealing with the survey of regional fauna, or revisions of Euro-. Several species described by Bakhvalov (1970, 1974, 1978, 1981) remain known only from the original publications supplied with very schematic figures and brief descriptions. In order to fill this gap, we decided to study all available material from Iran and Central Asian countries and provide step by step reviews of different genera. While comparing new species with species occurring in the region, we recognized two new synonyms and two new combinations in both genera. The goals of this paper are to provide illustrated descriptions of new species and redescriptions of poorly known species, along with new combinations, synonymies, and distribution records
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