On Sahastata (Araneae: Filistatidae): complementary description of the generotype and two new species from Oman and Morocco.

The Filistatinae genus Sahastata Benoit, 1968 is distributed in arid and semi-arid areas, from westernmost Sahara to India, and includes seven known species. Four of these are only known from one sex, including Sahastata nigra (Simon, 1897), the type species. Here we present the first description of a male of this species collected near the type locality in Muscat, Oman. Additionally, two new species are described: S. wunderlichi sp. nov. (♂♀, Morocco) and S. wesolowskae sp. nov. (♂♀, Oman). Sahastata infuscata (Kulczynski, 1901) is newly recorded from Kenya and Yemen and S. nigra is newly recorded from the United Arab Emirates. DNA barcodes are given for S. nigra and the two new species. We observed some details of the life cycle of three Sahastata species, including clutch size, time to maturation, and a biased sex ratio for individuals raised from egg sacs, indicating that only 20-25% of specimens reaching adulthood are males. We provide SEM images of spiders of this genus, some observations on the morphology of spinnerets and male palps, and a distribution map of the species included in the genus.

A review of the Spider Genus Atmetochilus of Sumatra, Indonesia, with First Analysis of Male Characters and Description of Three New Species (Araneae, Nemesiidae).

Sergei L. Zonstein and Yuri M. Marusik (2016) The first Sumatran representatives of Atmetochilus Simon, 1887, the genus formerly known only from two species from Myanmar and one species from India, are currently revealed and reviewed. Three new species (listed below) are described and the current concept of Atmetochilus is redefined following study of the male characters previously almost completely unknown. Most of these characters are studied, illustrated and discussed for the first time. The studied genus is found to be represented in Sumatra by three new species described here: A. koponeni sp. n. (♂♀), A. lehtineni sp. n. (♂♀) and A. sumatranus sp. n. (♂).

Redescription of Phrurolithus flavipes (Araneae: Phrurolithidae), with the first description of the male.

Phrurolithus C.L. Koch, 1839, with 71 named species, is the largest genus of the family Phrurolithidae, which contains 188 species belonging to 14 genera (Platnick 2014). It has an almost exclusively Holarctic distribution: 34 species are known from the Palaearctic, 35 are known from the Nearctic and two species are known from Hispaniola. The genus is rather poorly studied and has never been the subject of wide-scale revision. Almost half of its species are known from a single sex: 23 from females and nine from males. Additionally, 45 species are known from the original description only, and one species has never been illustrated (Platnick 2014).

Redescription of three species of Filistatidae (Araneae) described by C.F. Roewer from Afghanistan.

Types of three filistatid species described by Roewer (1960, 1962) from Afghanistan are redescribed and two of them transferred to other filistatid genera. The new combinations proposed are: Zaitunia afghana (Roewer 1962) comb. n. (ex. Filistata Latreille, 1810) and Tricalamus lindbergi (Roewer, 1962) comb. n. (ex. Pritha Lehtinen, 1967). The taxonomic position of Pholcoides afghana Roewer, 1960 is discussed and the species is placed in the filistatid subfamily Prithinae Gray, 1994.