Davus Genus

[BennyBTamachi]

Hi there

Just found these pictures online with comments saying that the genus Davus has been divided into 13 species, including the original D. pentaloris, and 12 new species... Anyone has heard of this or found any other sources?

Cheers!

 

[AphonopelmaTX]

Hi there

Just found these pictures online with comments saying that the genus Davus has been divided into 13 species, including the original D. pentaloris, and 12 new species... Anyone has heard of this or found any other sources?

Cheers!

First, a moderator note. Posting copyrighted material on this site that you do not have permission from the copyright holder is a violation of this site's rules. This includes, but is not necessarily limited to, photos and screenshots. Your images from the publication you are asking about have been deleted because it is copyrighted material.

Now onto the fun stuff. I finished reading the paper, referenced below, just a couple of hours ago and have to make a correction. The genus Davus wasn't divided into 13 species with 12 new ones, but rather the species Davus pentaloris was split into 12 new species. There have been no nomenclature changes so you won't find this for download or referenced in the World Spider Catalog. The research was to test the species hypothesis published by Ray Gabriel in 2016 who considered that the species Davus pentaloris was wide ranging- occurring from southern Mexico to Panama- with a high level of intraspecific variation.

The new research proposes a new hypothesis that D. pentaloris is actually 12 different species; the 13th being D. pentaloris itself. The support for the new hypothesis comes from the use of multiple lines of evidence including geographic range, morphology (including color and markings), molecular data, as well as multiple methods of analyzing the molecular data to construct a phylogeny. The results found that for each location D. pentaloris was sampled from within their range, a genetically and morphologically distinct evolutionary lineage was found. In other words, the hypothesis proposed by Gabriel (2016) was falsified and a new species was found to occur in 12 distinct locations from southern Mexico to Central America.

The research paper also explains that further sampling of D. pentaloris and testing is needed to further support the "multiple species" hypothesis. We can expect it will be some time before nomenclature changes are made and the new species are officially described.

References

Candia-Ramírez, D. T., & Francke, O. F. (2020). Another stripe on the tiger makes no difference? Unexpected diversity in the widespread tiger tarantula Davus pentaloris (Araneae: Theraphosidae: Theraphosinae). Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

Gabriel, R. (2016). Revised taxonomic placement of the species in the Central American genera Davus O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1892, Metriopelma Becker, 1878, and Schizopelma F. O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1897, with comments on species in related genera (Araneae: Theraphosidae). Arachnology 17(2): 61-92.

 

[KaroKoenig]

Thanks A-TX for summarizing the article. I guess this means that D. pentaloris in the hobby is likely a mess of hybrids. Makes the article in the most recent BTS journal kind of mute as well, I assume?

 

[Vanessa]

Having looked through the photos, the differences between the 13 can be minimal. I'm sure that they've been interbred in the hobby since the get-go and will continue to be hybridized by people who don't do their due diligence to ensure that they're breeding the same species. Extremely sad.

Links to the article here:

Another stripe on the tiger makes no difference? Unexpected diversity in the widespread tiger tarantula Davus pentaloris (Araneae: Theraphosidae: Theraphosinae)

Abstract. Integrative taxonomy is relevant for the discovery and delimitation of cryptic species by incorporating different sources of evidence to construc

academic.oup.com