Arachnologische Mitteilungen 58

32 W. Nentwig, T. Blick, D. Gloor, P. Jäger & C. Kropf ● Museum für Natur und Umwelt Lübeck, Germany (all former Strand types destroyed, Susanne Füting pers. comm.); ● Museum für Tierkunde, Dresden, Germany (today Senck- enberg Naturhistorische Sammlungen Dresden (SNSD) (all former Strand types destroyed, today no Strand types present, André Reimann pers. comm.); ● Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (MNHM), Paris, France (10 types available, web-based database analysis at https://science.mnhn.fr/institution/mnhn/collection/ar/ item/search ) ● Museum Oslo, no information obtained. ● Museum Wiesbaden (59 types from Strand present, 24 types known to be destroyed, Jäger 1998); ● Senckenberg Museum Frankfurt (SMF) (654 types avail- able, web-based database analysis at https://search.senck- enberg.de/aquila-public-search/search ) ; ● Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Stuttgart, Germany (all 169 Strand types destroyed, Renner (1988), today no Strand types present, web-based database analysis at http:// www.dbsmns.naturkundemuseum-bw.de ) ; ● Swedish Museum of Natural History Stockholm (NHRS) (11 types available, Torbjörn Kronestedt pers. comm.) ● Zoologisches Museum Berlin (ZMB) (237 types available, Jason Dunlop pers. comm.); Today, at least 971 Strand types are known to exist (654 in the SMF, 237 in the ZMB, 80 at further locations. 274 types are known to be destroyed, but the true number is probably much higher. Given the total range of 1535 described taxa, 290 types remain, where the location is unknown. From the taxa, we analyse in this study, 38 types could be found in the SMF, 12 in the ZMB, 3 in other museums, 13 are known to be destroyed, 16 are probably lost and the fate of the remain- ing types is unknown. All information on presence/absence of Strand’s type material, we obtained during this study, has been added to the World Spider Catalog, section type deposit. The absence of type material does not allow to re-inves- tigate Strand’s taxa. In most cases, such taxa were never re- collected by other researchers and never illustrated. In several cases, Strand’s description based on juvenile or subadult spe- cimens, often only one spider. We took the absence of type material in combination with lack of recollection and illust- ration usually as strong arguments for us to consider such a taxon as a “nomen dubium”. Infraspecific taxa described by Strand and the rules of ICZN According to the International Code of Zoological Nomen- clature (ICZN 2012), forms or varieties can be accepted as subspecies, if published before 1961. Strand described new taxa in many spider families and from most continents. Among the here considered infraspecific taxa, he described 42 taxa in Araneidae, ten Sparassidae, nine Tetragnathidae, seven Lycosidae, six Thomisidae, four Theraphosidae, four Theridi- idae and 20 taxa from 11 further families. The code (ICZN 2012) states that “a name which explicit- ly refers to an aberration is unavailable” (Article 45.6.2).This means that all 14 cases of Strand’s aberrations presented here are taxonomically irrelevant. Unfortunately, Strand’s descrip- tions of aberrations were taken over by Roewer (1942, 1955a). They should have been introduced by Roewer with a formal argumentation and then he would also be the nomenclatural author (ICZN Art. 45.6.). This did not happen and Roewer treated them as subspecies with Strand as the nomenclatural author, but here, most of them turned out to be synonyms of the nominate form. Five of the here treated infraspecific taxa are based on ju- veniles. From the descriptions given by Strand it is obvious to us that a species or subspecies identification is impossible, and, therefore, they are treated here in most cases as nomina dubia. Strand’s argumentation for a new name was usually based on differences in colouration (85% of cases) and/or further minor differences in body size or body shape (29%). Today, it is clear that these characters are mostly highly variable and not acceptable as argumentation for subspecies level. Someti- mes the misinterpretation of morphological variability led to wrong decisions. For Opadometa grata , known to be highly va- riable in opisthosomal colour pattern, Strand described seven different subspecies, but these are treated here as phenotypic plasticity. Even Strand’s notice of slight morphological variation of the genital organs (mentioned in 18% of the infraspecific taxa presented here) is dubious. On the one hand, Strand usually mentioned the overall similarity to the nominate species; on the other hand, he detected slight differences to justify the description of a new infraspecific taxon. One must also con- sider that at that time it was common to preserve and obser- ve specimens in alcohol, but to dry them a bit for inspection without alcohol, and then to transfer them back into alcohol (Strand 1911c: 10, 1913a: 363, 1913b: 618). It is obvious that the tissue suffers from that procedure, especially when repea- ted several times, and it is not possible to distinguish true differences from procedure-induced differences. Taxonomy Agelenidae Agelena jumbo kiwuensis Strand, 1913 = Mistaria kiwuensis (Strand, 1913) stat. nov. This variety as described by Strand (1913a: 407) from DR Congo has been redescribed by Roewer (1955b: 39), a draw- ing of the epigyne was provided and compared with the nom- inate form A. jumbo Strand, 1913 (Fig. 2) (Strand 1913a: 407) known from Rwanda and DR Congo. Roewer (1955b: 39) concluded that both epigynes are so different that kiwuen- sis should be considered a separate species, however, he did not formally elevate it to species rank. Bonnet (1955: 184) treated it as a synonym of the nominate form and the World Spider Catalog (2019) currently lists it as a subspecies. Here, we confirm Roewer’s conclusion (1955b: 39) and elevate it to species rank. Recently, A. jumbo had been transferred to the genus Mistaria Lehtinen, 1967 (Kioko et al. 2019), therefore, we conclude on Mistaria kiwuensis (Strand, 1913), stat. nov. The kiwuensis type material is available at the ZMB (35023, 35026, 35029). Araneidae Aranea annulata mensamontella Strand, 1907 = syn. nov. of the nominate form of Neoscona triangula (Keyserling, 1864) Strand (1907a: 534, 1907h: 623, sub A. annulella m. ) de- scribed this subspecies from a single male from Madagascar