Estudo taxonômico de Theraphosa Walckenaer, 1805 (Araneae: Mygalomorphae: Theraphosidae) da Amazônia brasileira e notas em Idiopidae.

Abstract

Mygalomorphae is an infraorder of Araneae, where individuals are known as caranguejeiras, crab-spiders or tarantulas (Almeida, 2018). Among the Mygalomorphae families, we have Theraphosidae, which is one of the most diverse, containing about a third of the species of the infraorder (Coddington & Levi, 1991), currently has a diversity of 158 genera and 1.055 described species (World Spider Catalog, 2023). In this family are the spiders that reach the largest body size ever recorded, as in the case of Theraphosa blondi (Latreille, 1804), an Amazonian species, which can measure 26 cm (Marshall & Uetz, 1993; Rudloff & Wainmann, 2010). And we have the family Idiopidae Simon, 1889 currently composed of 23 genera and 441 valid species described (World spider catalog, 2023), but only two genera are present in Brazil. They consist mostly of spiders known as trapdoor spiders, which create structures for shelter, hunting and protection against possible predators. The trapdoor cover also helps to keep the burrow with stable humidity and temperature, in addition to protecting against UV rays in open places, some species also camouflage the trapdoor using clay, branches, leaves and moss to hide from predators and improve their predation strategy (Mason et al., 2013). We approach the taxonomy of both families, focusing on the genera Theraphosa, Idiops and Neocteniza, where we describe and illustrate additional characters, descriptions of new species and the inclusion of new distribution records for the genera. With the data obtained in the execution of this research project, we have a great scientific advance related to the knowledge of families, especially for the genus Theraphosa, which some researchers have already defined as “an enormous taxonomic mess”.