Abstract
During a scientific internship in a mountainous area near Agadir, several caves were prospected; the sampled material included several spider species. Morphological and taxonomical analysis revealed two new species to science: an anophthalmic troglobiont species, Agraecina agadirensisspec. nov. (description based on three females) and a new member of the genus Steatoda in the Mediterranean region, Steatoda ifricolaspec. nov. (description based on both sexes). Diagnoses, drawings and photos are presented.
Highlights
The genus Agraecina includes seven species: A. canariensis Wunderlich, 1992 from the Canary Islands; A. cristiani (Georgescu, 1989), found in a cave in Romania; A. hodna Bosmans, 1999 from Algeria; A. lineata (Simon, 1878) distributed from the Western Mediterranean to Kazakhstan; A. rutilia (Simon, 1897) from Sierra Leone; A. salsicola Bosmans & Boubakri, 2020 from Tunisia, a newly described salt marsh species and A. scupiensis Deltshev, 2016 from North Macedonia (World Spider Catalog 2020)
We describe S. ifricola spec. nov. (Fig. 1b), only known from caves in the Moroccan High Atlas (Fig. 3a)
Material and methods During a scientific and technical internship, samples were collected in autumn 2019 from several caves (Fig. 2) from the mountains of the Moroccan High Atlas (Agadir region, Fig. 3a), including: Ifri N’Telmate, Ifri N’Taghrat and the two distinct areas of Imi Ougoug: Ifri Ouado (“Araignées” cave) and “Chauves-souris” cave (Fig. 3b)
Summary
The genus Agraecina includes seven species: A. canariensis Wunderlich, 1992 from the Canary Islands; A. cristiani (Georgescu, 1989), found in a cave in Romania; A. hodna Bosmans, 1999 from Algeria; A. lineata (Simon, 1878) distributed from the Western Mediterranean to Kazakhstan; A. rutilia (Simon, 1897) from Sierra Leone; A. salsicola Bosmans & Boubakri, 2020 from Tunisia, a newly described salt marsh species and A. scupiensis Deltshev, 2016 from North Macedonia (World Spider Catalog 2020). Known from the type locality (Tizgui, Morocco) (Fig. 3); in one cave (Imi Ougoug, Ifri Ouado) in the High Atlas Mountains (Fig. 2a). Paratype: 1 (, Morocco: region of Souss-Massa, prefecture of Agadir Ida-Outanane, caïdat of Taghazout, Paradise Valley, Ifri Taghrat Wankrim cave (9.51582°W, 30.59151°N, 380 m a.s.l.), same habitat, hand collecting, 4.
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