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 description of the female given (l.c. _supra_) needs but little
addition. It may be noticed, however, that the central longitudinal
tapering orange band on the caput is faintly continued to the extreme
hinder margin of the thorax, and the thoracic fovea is rather sharply
curved. The intervals between the eyes is the same as in those of _N.
Moggridgii_, though their absolute size in some examples appeared to
be smaller. In both sexes there are several small, black, tooth-like,
tubercular spines on the inner side of the base of each maxilla, but
none at the apex of the labium.
The colour of the _cephalothorax_ in the male is bright-reddish
orange-yellow; a large portion of the sides of the caput, and the
ocular area also, is black-brown; the middle of the thorax is
distinctly marked with black-brown lines radiating to the thoracic
fovea.
Other, less deep, brown markings are mixed with these radiating
lines; there are a few prominent bristles in front of the ocular
area, a single longitudinal line of erect bristles along the middle
of the orange band from the eyes to the thoracic fovea, and the whole
cephalothorax is more or less clothed with greyish-yellow adpressed
hairs.
The _falces_ are of a deep blackish red-brown colour, longitudinally
striped with yellow-greyish hairs mixed with dark bristles; and there
are some strong spines at the fore extremity on the inner side.
The _abdomen_ is oval, tolerably convex above, of a dull, pale,
straw colour, suffused with brown at its fore extremity, whence an
indistinct central longitudinal band tapers to a point rather more
than half way to the spinners; on either side of this band are some
oblique, lateral, brown lines, which become broken chevrons, between
the termination of the central band and the spinners. The sides are
obscurely and irregularly marked with brown, and the under side is
of a uniform dull straw-yellow; the abdomen is clothed thickly with
mixed yellow-grey and dark hairs; the upper side is furnished also
with strong, nearly erect bristly black ones.
Each _tarsus_ terminates with three claws; those of the superior pair
are pectinated beneath, but the number of teeth appears to vary in
the different legs, from six to eight. The tibial joint of the first
pair is of the same character as that in the males of other species:
it has a strong black curved spine directed inwards from the fore
extremity of the under side, and a short bluntish-conical, but very
distinct prominence at the same extremity on the inner side, not far
from the base of the curved spine, Plate XX., fig. B 4 and C; the
colour of the legs is yellow, tinged with orange, the upper sides of
the femora being nearly black; the palpi are similar in colour, the
upper side of the humeral joints being suffused with a blackish hue.
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