A new species of Philodromus (Artanes) from Macedonia, Greece (Araneae: Philodromidae)

Abstract

Artanes Thorell, 1870 constitutes a well-defined distal clade within the collective genus Philodromus Walckenaer, 1826 and was assigned to subgeneric rank by Muster (2009). Thereupon Logunov and Kunt (2010) suggested re-elevation of Artanes to genus level, but this proposal is not followed here with reference to the phylogenetic reconstructions presented in Muster (2009). In particular, delineation and synapomorphies of closely related genera and species groups remain to be defined. The west-Palearctic species of the taxon have recently been revised to comprise seven Mediterranean endemics and five more widespread species (Muster 2009). A further species from Turkey was described by Logunov and Kunt (2010) which we had previously considered a geographic variant of P. poecilus (Thorell, 1872) (see remarks on intraspecific variation in this species in Muster 2009). Shortly after publication of the 2009 study, a series of specimens from pine trees in Macedonia, Greece was sampled by a group of Belgian arachnologists that could not be allocated to any of the known species. Due to similarities in the shape of the receptacula, we originally assumed to have found more females and the unknown male of P. pentheri Muster, 2009. However, a close examination revealed important structural differences in the vulvae, most importantly, the newly collected females show a voluminous, sclerotised bursa copulatrix. In this paper we therefore describe a further species, belonging to the P. poecilus group of the Philodromus subgenus Artanes. This is a nice example in illustrating how the availability of a modern revision may trigger new findings.