Arachnologische Mitteilungen 58

Infraspecific spider taxa of Embrik Strand 31 whether he had seen the specimens or only read about it or seen a drawing in a publication. Strand used also other infra- specific categories such as v. or var. for varietas (variety), f. for forma (form) and ab. for aberratio (aberration). For Strand, the most common reason to describe or name a new infraspecific taxon was a different colouration, but he also argued with slight differences in size or shape, in leg spination, eye distances and slight morphological variation of the genital organs. It has to be mentioned that Strand obvi- ously only rarely compared his spiders to the types described by other arachnologists because he refused nomenclatural acts, changing of names or synonymizations by examining types on the base of the upcoming type concept (e.g. Strand 1930, 1943). But it should be kept in mind that loaning speci- mens was much harder back then. He compared them to the illustrations and mainly to the descriptions available to him from the literature and frequently complained that these il- lustrations were not precise enough or differed from his speci- mens. Given the drawing and printing technique at that time, it is not astonishing that Strand often found differences be- tween his specimens and the published “official” appearance of the species. Strand often described the colour pattern of a spider in extreme detail (1–2 pages were not uncommon) and took ex- tremely precise measurements from all body parts. However, most new infraspecific taxa in his descriptions were based on only one individual and do not account for intra-specific vari- ation For the taxa presented here, in 74 cases Strand’s descrip- tion was based on a female, in six cases on a male, in only ten cases on both sexes, in five cases on juvenile specimens and in five cases he did not state what sex he described because his description was more general. When Bonnet started to publish his Bibliographia arane- orum (Bonnet 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959), he disregarded Strand’s infraspecific taxa (and subspecies, varieties or forms from other authors in general) or synonymized them with the nominate form because most of these names were never cited (“n’ont été citées qu’une seule fois, je les laisse comme si elles étaient en synonymie de l‘espèce principale avec laquelle elles ont été décrites“ [they were cited only once, I let them as they were a synonym of the nominate species, they were described with], Bonnet 1955: 99). In total, Bonnet listed only 71 of the infraspecific names from Strand presented here, and syno- nymized them all with the nominate form. It should be kept in mind, that Bonnet did not analyse Strand’s descriptions or types, it was just his standard procedure. In contrast, Roewer (1942, 1955a) included all these taxa in his “Katalog der Ara- neae” and he listed most of them as subspecies, probably his standard approach. Historically, this latter work formed the basis of the World Spider Catalog. Strand’s quality level Strand described his taxa often from highly damaged or doubtful material. Other taxonomists would not work with such insufficiently preserved specimens but he often stated the degree of damage and continued that nevertheless this is sufficient to describe this specimen as something new. The description of Scytodes quattuordecemmaculata Strand, 1907 is based on one female with the opisthosoma so badly main- tained that neither form nor colouration can be recognized. The subspecies S. q. clarior Strand, 1907 was justified by col- our differences but, again, the opisthosoma was badly dam- aged. Strand’s comment: “An der Hand nur zweier Individuen lässt das sich aber nicht sicher entscheiden und jedenfalls ist der Unterschied gross genug, um einen Varietätsnamen zu rechtfertigen.” [With only two individuals it is difficult to de- cide but the difference is large enough to justify the name of a variety.] (Strand 1907f: 116).This underlines Strand’s unique view on slight differences and a very pronounced addiction to describe everything deviating as a new taxon. Where are the types? According to the World Spider Catalog (2019) Strand de- scribed 1535 new taxa. For most taxa, Strand did not mention in his publications where the types were deposited, according to his disregard of the type concept (e.g. Strand 1930, 1943), and it is today very difficult to locate the types if necessary. Exception- al are some of the earlier publications where Strand received and described spiders from a given museum (e.g., 1906c, 1907a, 1907c, 1907f from Stuttgart; 1907d from Lübeck; 1907g from Tübingen; 1907e from Wiesbaden) but we do not know if he also returned the material properly. In most other publications, he mentioned that he received material from a collector or a given museum but it remained unclear where the material was deposited. In rare cases he stated such as “Die Typen sämtlicher Arten gehören dem K. Naturalienkabinett in Stuttgart” [the types of all species belong to the museum in Stuttgart] (Strand 1908c: 12) but this does not imply that he returned it to this collection, instead, they may have been lodged with the Mu- seum in Berlin where he did most of his work. Later, Strand do- nated his personal arachnological collection to the Zoological Society of France ( Judson & Rollard 2002) but it is unknown how comprehensive this donation was and whether it included any types that belonged to other museums. More generally, it is assumed that many types do not ex- ist anymore. All types stored in the museums of Lübeck and Dresden (unknown numbers of types) and Stuttgart (at least 169 types, probably many more) were destroyed during the Second World War, in many other German museums parts of the collections were destroyed (Roewer 1955a, 1959, 1960, Renner 1988, Jäger 1998, 2014). All Strand material in Tü- bingen was destroyed shortly after the Second World War.To be on the safe side, we checked for type material from Strand in the following institutions: ● Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale (MRAC), Tervuren, Belgium (no Strand types, web-based database analysis at https://www.africamuseum.be/fr/research/collections_li- braries/biology/collections/arachnomorphae and Rudy Jocqué pers. comm.); ● Museum der Universität Tübingen (MUT), Tübingen, Germany, all type material probably destroyed shortly after the war, Erich Weber pers. comm.); Tab. 1: Numbers of species and subspecies of spiders described by Embrik Strand according to the World Spider Catalog (2019) species subspecies total described 1370 165 1535 synonym  307  65  372 nomen dubium  115   4  119 homonym replaced    1    1 valid  947 102 1049 valid (%)  69.1 61.8  68.3