jeanmartins's Favorites

Alimentando-se de cupins alados. Na segunda foto podem ver, estava segurando dezenas deles! Vimos uma semelhante capturando uma e então entrando em sua toca, protegida por um alçapão perfeito, impossível de identificar no solo!
It was feeding on winged termites, which were coming out that night. In the second photo you can see it packed with dozens of termites. In an earlier opportunity, we observed a conspecific catching the termite and then walking it’s burrow, with a perfect trapdoor unidentifiable in the soil!

Meri pictitarsis was described by Simon in 1880 in the genus Sadala, but later transferred to Olios. Recently Rheims & Jäger (2022) revised the genus Sadala and erected Meri. This is the first depiction of the habitus of female Meri pictitarsis, found by me in our collection.

Please note the strong cheliceral region, conspicuous spination on the legs and the patterned abdomen, which is still visible after nearly 36 years in our collection (my age!). It remains to be seen whether somatic differences between the species are described in the future.

As one can see in the ventral image, if naturalists take ventral shots of their specimen I think it should be possible to ID this species based on photos as the epigyne is very remarkable.

H. Höfer leg., SMNK-ARA 14717. T. Bauer det., C. A. Rheims vid. (thanks a lot!)

Habitus dorsal, habitus ventral, epigyne in-situ, epigyne extracted, vulva.

I am not completely satisfied with the vulva image, but this was the best I could do given the extreme 3-dimensional structure.

Please notify me when the images are used.