Supplement to Harvesting Ants and Trap-Door SpidersMoggridge, John Traherne
Science
Supplement to Harvesting Ants and Trap-Door Spiders
Moggridge, John Traherne
Ants; Trap-door spiders
The _maxillæ_ are strong, divergent, cylindrical, with a small
angular prominence at their inner extremity; they are furnished with
hairs, but no denticulations, and there is a strong fringe of reddish
hairs on their inner margins. The maxillæ are of the same colour as
the palpi.
The _labium_ is short and broad; its breadth double its height and
its apex rounded. Its junction with the _sternum_ appeared to be
about at right angles. It is darker in colour than the maxillæ, but
with a paler apex; its surface is furnished with bristly hairs, but
there are no denticulations at its apex. _Sternum_ oval, truncate
before, pointed behind, furnished with bristly hairs, and of the same
colour as the legs.
The _abdomen_ is of an oblong-oval form, truncate before, and
tolerably convex above; it is of a pale dull yellowish colour clothed
with yellow-grey hairs, among which are a good many prominent
dark bristly ones; the fore part of the upper side is irregularly
marked with black-brown; following this towards the hinder part,
and reaching half way or more to the spinners, is an indistinct
longitudinal central line of the same colour, throwing off numerous
short lateral lines at right angles; towards either side of the
hinder two-thirds of the abdomen are several oblique black-brown
lines extending more or less over the sides; one, about the middle,
extends farther over the sides than the rest, and almost unites with
a curved deep black-brown transverse line crossing the under side of
the abdomen a little way in front of the spinners.
The under side of the abdomen is similar in colour to the upper
side, and, besides the transverse dark line above mentioned, there
is another touching the anterior margins of the posterior spiracular
plates; the superior pair of spinners are short and strong; the
inferior pair small, and in the ordinary position, but apparently not
(proportionally) so small as in the females of some other species.
A single adult male was received for examination from M. Eugène
Simon, by whom it was found at Digne (Basses Alpes, France). M. Simon
conjectures that it may be the male of _Nemesia Moggridgii_ (p. 273),
but some slight differences in the size and positions of the eyes,
and in the pattern on the cephalothorax, and on the under, as well
as the upper, side of the abdomen, lead me to believe that it is of
a different, and hitherto undescribed species, though probably very
closely allied to some others, especially to _Nemesia Manderstjernæ_
(_N. meridionalis_, Cambr., described, p. 283); in the present
species however the hind-lateral eyes are much larger in proportion
than in _N. Manderstjernæ_.
_Habitat._ Digne, Basses Alpes, France.
Nemesia dubia, sp. n., Plate XIX., fig. E, p. 229.
Syn. _Nemesia cæmentaria_, Simon, _Aranéides nouv. ou peu connus du
Midi de l'Europe_, Mém. Liège, 1873 (separate copy), p. 24.
Adult male, length 5-1/2 lines to 6 lines.
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