First Description of the Female of the Trinidadian Theraphosine Spinosatibiapalpus trinitatis (Pocock, 1903) (Araneae: Theraphosidae)

The hitherto unknown female of the theraphosine Spinosatibiapalpus trinitatis (Pocock, 1903) is herein described based on the paralectotype series of the schismatotheline Neoholothele incei (F. O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1899) housed in the collections of the Natural History Museum, London.

Originally described as Metriopelma trinitatis Pocock, 1903, S. trinitatis was based on a single male collected with the location of simply "Trinidad" [5] (p. 114). Subsequently, in 1911, Petrunkevitch [6] considered this species to belong to the genus Crypsidromus Ausserer, 1871 [7], following Simon [8] who had considered Crypsidromus synonymous with Metriopelma Becker, 1878 [9] in 1892. Strand [10] described a subspecies, Crypsidromus trinitatis pauciaculeis Strand, 1916, based on a single male, also from the general locality of "Trinidad" [10] (p. 84). One hundred years later, Gabriel [11], in his revision of Metriopelma (alongside other genera), tentatively transferred both C. trinitatis and C. trinitatis pauciaculeis to Pseudhapalopus Strand, 1907 [12] where they remained until the redescription and transfer of P. trinitatis to the newly described Spinosatibiapalpus by Gabriel and Sherwood [4]. In the same work, Gabriel and Sherwood [4] considered P. trinitatis pauciaculeis to be a junior synonym of S. trinitatis based on the near-identical morphology of the male palpal bulb, tibial apophysis and palpal tibial apophysis. This resolved the placement of the subspecies shortly after it was preliminarily considered a subspecies inquirenda by Nentwig et al. [13] whose important work served to stabilise the taxonomy of a significant number of subspecific taxa described by Embrik Strand (1876Strand ( -1947 during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Many (but not all) of Strand's type specimens from 1906-1917 deposited in German museums were destroyed during RAF bombing raids in the Second World War.
Remarks: The paralectotype females of N. incei (numbered herein 1-4 to allow ease of reference by future workers) are fragmented. Paralectotype 1 is the specimen from which the spermathecae was dissected by a previous worker. All specimens have legs detached from the body and, in some cases, certain legs are missing entirely. Some additional legs and leg segments were found mixed in the tube which contains the lectotype male of N. incei and another male of that taxon (thereby a paralectotype but not mentioned as such in Guadanucci and Weinmann [18]) but none of the extra legs could be matched unequivocally to any particular female of S. trinitatis. Therefore, we only included data for legs found in the tube which contained the females, and which could be definitively associated with a particular specimen. Some of the extra legs found loose in the tube with the males of N. incei are considerably larger than the other legs that could be associated with the four S. trinitatis specimens. Thus, they may be from an entirely different specimen (or specimens) altogether, no longer present in the sample. This possibility is further supported by the fact the accession number accounts for 8 specimens but only 6 (two males of N. incei sensu stricto and four females of S. trinitatis) were found to be present in the tubes in the jar. Pickard-Cambridge [17] (p. 895) states that Mr. Ince collected "four males and several females" thereby not specifying the precise number of females that he received from Ince. The two other males mentioned by Pickard-Cambridge [17] are not present in the jar and are probably lost, but the extra leg segments in the jar with the two present males of N. incei are far too large to be from other males of this species and thus must originate from some other specimen(s), possibly even a species unrelated to the other two taxa found in the sample. All specimens and parts of specimens found still associated with the tubes in the original jar were recurated by DS during the course of this work.
Whilst examining the above type material DS decided to check other historical specimens in the BMNH collection and located a jar containing a single female theraphosine labelled as "Hapalopus incei" from Trinidad collected by Beaven Neave Rake (1866-1922). Pickard-Cambridge [17] (p. 895) mentions additional, non-type, material collected by Beaven Rake and Thomas Potter (these two collectors operated individually from each other) which he considered conspecific with N. incei (as H. incei) and presumably this specimen is one of those additional "examples" from Rake mentioned by Pickard-Cambridge [17]. This specimen was found to share all the secondary taxonomic characters (see introduction) found in the paralectotypes of N. incei and dissection of the spermathecae confirmed the specimen to indeed be S. trinitatis ( Figure 1C).

Discussion
Comparison of historical material against more recently collected material, where possible, is valuable for taxonomic works. We were recently able to view photographs from a colleague of two more recently preserved specimens (one male and one female) of S. trinitatis collected 2 km north of Port of Spain. The morphology of the male palpal bulb is congruent with that of the holotype of S. trinitatis, confirming the identity of these specimens and allowing us to compare the paralectotype series of N. incei against a more recently collected female. The female shared the characters mentioned above for the paralectotype series of N. incei, especially the morphology of the spermathecae, supporting the conclusion that the paralectotype females of N. incei can indeed be considered conspecific with the holotype male of S. trinitatis. We can also therefore solidify the presence of S. trinitatis on the island of Trinidad and indicate a more precise distribution, which at the very least encompasses an area in the north of the island, close to the capital.
The distribution of the congeneric S. tansleyi still needs clarification, and its location of "west-central Trinidad" may not necessarily refer to the island of Trinidad (see Gabriel and Sherwood [4]). Additionally, the females of S. trinitatis examined for this work are all >15 mm smaller in body length in comparison to that of the holotype male of S. tansleyi. This, in our opinion, also makes conspecifity very unlikely. We have now directly examined and measured a total of 12 specimens of S. trinitatis in museum collections (6 males, 5 females and one specimen of indeterminate sex) and have observed low intrasexual and intraspecific variation in body size, with no overlap in either sex with that of the holotype male of S. tansleyi.