Abstract
The genus Eulibitia was described by Roewer including three species from Colombia and Ecuador: Eulibitia maculata Roewer, 1912, E. annulipes Roewer, 1912 and E. sexpunctata Roewer, 1914. Herein, the genus is revisited and only the type species, Eulibitia maculata Roewer, 1912 is maintained from the previous configuration. Eulibitia sexpunctata is transferred to Ambatoiella Mello- Leitão, 1943 and E. annulipes is considered as Cosmetinae incertae sedis. Acromares lateralis Goodnight & Goodnight, 1943 and Paramessa castanea (Sørensen, 1932) are here considered junior subjective synonyms of Messatana scalaris (Sørensen, 1932) and Eulibitia maculata, respectively. Brachylibitia Mello-Leitão, 1941, currently a junior synonym of Platymessa, is regarded as a synonym of Eulibitia. Platymessa Mello-Leitão, 1941, with two species, and the monotypic genera Messatana Strand, 1942 and Paramessa Mello-Leitão, 1933, are synonymized with Eulibitia Roewer, 1912, yielding the following new combinations: Eulibitia ectroxantha (for Brachylibitia ectroxantha Mello-Leitão, 1941), E. h-inscriptum (for Platymessa h-inscripta Mello-Leitão, 1941) and E. scalaris (for Libitia (Messa) scalaris Sørensen, 1932). Eulibitia is re-diagnosed and five new species are described: E. castor sp. nov., E. pollux sp. nov., E. clytemnestra sp. nov., E. leda sp. nov. and E. helena sp. nov. A key to the nine Eulibitia species is presented; the morphology of Eulibitia is compared with that of Libitia, Libitiella and Ambatoiella.
Highlights
Opiliones are the third most diverse order of arachnids, comprising more than 6500 species and superseded only by Acari and Araneae (Harvey 2002)
The taxonomy of Cosmetidae is still unstable, an effort has been made here to provide a diagnosis of Eulibitia comparing it with genera that are morphologically similar
Morphology Eulibitia seems to be a good example of the conservative external morphology of Cosmetidae mentioned above in the Introduction; the variations in shape of outline of DS and the morphology of pedipalpus, legs and chelicera are extremely subtle, and the delimitation of species may be difficult
Summary
Opiliones are the third most diverse order of arachnids, comprising more than 6500 species and superseded only by Acari and Araneae (Harvey 2002). Cosmetidae is supported among many other features by having the pedipalpus with a flattened femur, spoon-shaped tibia (Kury & Pinto-da-Rocha 2007) and a defensive behavior known as leg dabbing (character 46 in Caetano & Machado 2013, they only used the species Gryne coccinelloides (Mello-Leitão, 1935) and Vonones sayi (Simon, 1879)). Roewer (e.g., 1912, 1923) created a system of diagnosing genera based on immediately recognizable tarsal counts and the armature of the ocularium, dorsal scutum and free tergites. This has been widely called the “Roewerian system” (starting with Henriksen 1932: 222). Roewer ignored most of the potentially useful diagnostic features (e.g., shape of dorsal scutum (DS) outline, spot pattern in DS, armature of basal segments of legs, shape of glans, chaetotaxy of penis ventral plate) in favor of the above cited character sets, resulting in obviously artificial assemblages
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