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Updated: Jul 8, 2026

Harvesting Venom Toxins from Assassin Bugs and Other Heteropteran Insects
Published on: April 21, 2018
New data on Indian nursery-web spiders (Araneae: Pisauridae)
Pradeep M Sankaran1, Anitha Abraham2, Steven H Williams3
1Division of Arachnology; Department of Zoology; Sacred Heart College; Thevara; Cochin; Kerala 682 013; India. pradeepmspala@rediffmail.com.
Abstract:
Updated data on Indian nursery-web spiders of the genera Dendrolycosa Doleschall, 1859, Euprosthenops Pocock, 1897, Hygropoda Thorell, 1895a, Perenethis L. Koch, 1878, and Polyboea Thorell, 1895b are presented here. The following new synonymy is recognised: Dendrolycosabobbiliensis (Reddy & Patel, 1993) syn. nov. is synonymised with D. robusta (Thorell, 1895). The validity of Dendrolycosagitae (Tikader, 1970), D. sahyadriensis Sudhin, Sen & Jäger, 2023, and D. stauntoni Pocock, 1900 is discussed. The possible synonymy of Dendrolycosa sahyadriensis with D.gitae, as well as that of D.gitae with D.spadicaria (Simon, 1897a), and Polyboea zonaformis (Wang, 1993) with P. vulpina Thorell, 1895 are discussed. Euprosthenopsellioti (O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1877) is redescribed and illustrated based on its type material, and the vulva of the genus is illustrated for the first time. A lectotype is designated for Hygropodagracilis (Thorell, 1891), which is redescribed based on the type and freshly collected material. A new species, Hygropodakannimara Sankaran sp. nov. is described and illustrated based on male and female specimens collected from the southern Indian state of Kerala. Redescriptions of Perenethissindica (Simon, 1897) and P.vulpina based on freshly collected material are provided, and doubt is cast on the possible synonymy of the former species with P. venusta L. Koch, 1878. Finally, discusion about the type locality of Perenethis dentifasciata (O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1885) is presented.
