Zalmoxidae (Arachnida: Opiliones: Laniatores) of the Paleotropics: a catalogue of Southeast Asian and Indo-Pacific species
Author
Sharma, Prashant P.
Author
Kury, Adriano B.
Author
Giribet, Gonzalo
text
Zootaxa
2011
2972
37
58
journal article
10.5281/zenodo.206628
edfa19b9-1107-4839-a098-e25b9f814bf1
1175-5326
206628
Zalmoxis darwinensis
Goodnight & Goodnight, 1948
, restored combination
(
Figure 1
c)
Zalmoxis darwinensis
Goodnight & Goodnight, 1948
, p. 4–6, figs. 10–11.
Zalmoxista
darwinensis
:
Roewer, 1949b
, p. 143–144.
Record.
*Darwin,
Australia
, collected
February 9–13, 1945
by Borys Malkin.
Remarks.
Roewer (1949) differentiated the genus
Zalmoxista
from
Zalmoxis
primarily on the basis of the fivesegmented second tarsus, and secondarily on the visibility of the spiracle and shape of the transverse plates, i.e., sulci ("Querfürche"). None of these characters are reliable for distinguishing genera from
Zalmoxis
, singly or in combination, given the variability of
Zalmoxis
species (
Goodnight & Goodnight, 1953
). Three species were placed in
Zalmoxista
:
Zalmoxis australis
(
Sørensen, 1886
)
, which
Roewer (1912)
himself had once placed in
Zalmoxis
;
Zalmoxis darwinensis
(
Goodnight & Goodnight, 1948
)
; and
Zalmoxis tuberculatus
(
Goodnight & Goodnight, 1948
)
. Furthermore, the
type
species of
Zalmoxista
,
Zalmoxista
australis
(
Sørensen, 1886
)
, was subsequently transferred to
Samoidae (Pérez-González & Kury, 2007)
. Roewer's convention was not universally followed, but it was not formally addressed either. Here we return
Zalmoxista
darwinensis
(
Goodnight & Goodnight, 1948
) and
Zalmoxista
tuberculata
(
Goodnight & Goodnight, 1948
) to
Zalmoxis
. In addition to the aforementioned limitations in the characters used to distinguish these species from
Zalmoxis
, we observe from re-examination of the
type
material of these two species (ref.
Fig. 1
), as well as recently collected material (by P.P.S.) that
Zalmoxis darwinensis
Goodnight & Goodnight, 1948
is more closely related to
Zalmoxis
cardwellensis
Forster, 1955
than to New Caledonian
Zalmoxis
, with respect to both gross morphology and molecular sequence data (Sharma, work in progress).