Arachnologische Mitteilungen 58

48 W. Nentwig, T. Blick, D. Gloor, P. Jäger & C. Kropf but generally) as synonyms, Roewer (1942, 1955a) elevated all varieties and even aberrations to the level of subspecies. A few examples may illustrate the difficulties with Strand’s approach and how other arachnologists challenged his taxo- nomic decisions. Benoit (1962) stated that the variation benina Strand , 1913 of Gasteracantha testudinaria Simon, 1910 is only a colour variation without taxonomic importance and syno- nymized it with the nominate form, now Isoxya testudinaria (Simon , 1910). Blandin (1976) explained that the differences of the vari- ety Pisaura rothiformis orientalis Strand, 1913 to the nominate form concerned only minor details and were also based on one male specimen only. He proposed it as a synonym of the nominate form, now Afropisaura rothiformis (Strand , 1908). Strand (1914a) described Filistata hebraea according to one female, the subspecies F. hebraea limbomaculata (smaller, slightly different colouration) according to two females and another female as Filistata delimbata ; all three taxa from the same location. Brignoli (1982) found the types of all three taxa, identified all of them as juvenile Pritha in very bad sha- pe, impossible to assign to a species, and classified them as nomina dubia. The eight forms of Aranea haematocnemis Strand , 1913 (forma antepicta , constrictifasciata , recurvata , nigrifoliata , mo- notonia , lanceolatella , decoratella , indistinctepicta ) were synony- mized by Grasshoff (1986) with the nominate form. Jäger (2014) synonymized three subspecies ( chinesica , ja- ponica , maculipes ) of Heteropoda venatoria (Linnaeus , 1767) described by Strand (1907b) with the nominate form. Breitling et al. (2015) concluded that melanistic speci- mens are typical for boreoalpine populations and should not be considered subspecies in the modern sense. Consequently, they synonymized var. islandicus Strand , 1906 with the nomi- nate species Araneus diadematus Clerck , 1757. Similarly, The- ridion varians melanotum Strand , 1907 was synonymized with Theridion varians Hahn , 1833 because “the short description clarifies without doubt that this form is not a subspecies in the modern sense, but merely refers to the common dark co- lour variant of this highly variable species” (Breitling et al. 2015: 76) . The World Spider Catalog (2019) still contains nearly 500 subspecies of other authors, mainly from older times (Fig. 1), and most of them are probably as doubtful as those created by Strand.The current study may be seen as a blueprint to analy- se spider subspecies further, with the overall aim of reducing taxonomic redundancy in this diverse arthropod lineage. Acknowledgements We thank Julia Altmann (SMF), Jason Dunlop (ZMB) and Am- bros Hänggi (Basel) for the loan of specimens. Christoph Hörweg (Naturhistorisches Museum Wien) provided photos from type ma- terial. Rainer Breitling (University of Manchester), Susanne Füting (Museum für Natur und Umwelt Lübeck), Fritz Geller-Grimm (MuseumWiesbaden), Danilo Harms (CeNak Hamburg), Christo- phe Hervé (MNHM, Paris),Marco Isaia (University of Turin), Rudy Joqué (MRACTervuren),Torbjörn Kronestedt (NHRS Stockholm), André Reimann (SNSDDresden),Franz Renner (formerly Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Stuttgart) and ErichWeber (MUTTübin- gen) gave us helpful comments and information. We also thank the reviewers and Petr Dolejš for their constructive comments. 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