Ultra rare Paraplectana sakaguchii Uyemura, 1938 (Araneae:Araneidae) new to Korean spider fauna

Abstract

The spider genus Paraplectana comprises 11 species described mostly from Africa and Asia (Platnick, 2014); P. coccinella (Thorell, 1890) from Myanmar and Nias Is., P. duodecimmaculata Simon, 1897 from Java, P. hemisphaerica (C. L. Koch, 1844) from Sierra Leone, P. kittenbergeri Caporiacco, 1947 from Tanzania, P. multimaculata Thorell, 1899 from Cameroon and East Africa, P. sakaguchii Uyemura, 1938 from Japan and China, P. thorntoni (Blackwall, 1865) from Central Africa and Yemen, P. thorntoni occidentalis Strand, 1916 from West and Central, P. tsushimensis Yamaguchi, 1960 from China, Taiwan, and Japan, P. walleri (Blackwall, 1865) from West and Central Africa, and Madagascar, and P. walleri ashantensis Strand, 1907 from Ghana. Among them, Paraplecta sakaguchii was erected by Uyemura in 1938 from Wakayama Prefecture, Japan. The male of this spider have never been described for 6 decades. In 2010, Tanikawa and Harigae (2010) finally described the male of this species. They secured the male of this species by hatching of unknown Cyrtarachnine eggsac obtained by chance. They identified the species by using morphological and molecular features. The single female of this species was collected by sweep net between the shrubs at the foot of Mt. Mudeung located in Gwangju metropolitan city in August, 2012. Present work briefly described and illustrated this species using a stereoscopic dissecting microscope (Olympus SZ 60). The spider genus Paraplectana is also newly recorded to Korean spider fauna. The voucher specimen of this study was deposited in the collection of National Institute of Biological resources (NIBR), Korea.