First record of the genus Piratula Roewer, 1960 from India, with the description of a new species (Araneae: Lycosidae: Zoicinae)
Roewer (1955) erected the lycosid genus Piratula Roewer, 1960, with Piratula hygrophila (Thorell, 1872) as its type
species. Dondale & Redner (1981) synonymised the genus with Pirata Sundevall, 1833. Even though Zyuzin (1985) and
Logunov (1992) questioned this synonymy, and argued about the validity of Piratula, they did not formally revalidate the
genus. Later, Omelko et al. (2011) resurrected Piratula, and rediagnosed it. Though Breitling (2019, 2021) pointed out
the possible synonymy of Piratula with Pirata again, based on a molecular analysis, it has not formally accepted due to
the inconsistency in the results based only on COI gene (e.g. Edwards & Bensch 2009; Klopfstein et al. 2016), and the
genus is still considered valid. Piratula currently comprises 28 nominal species, most of which were recently transferred
from Pirata (Omelko et al. 2011; World Spider Catalog 2025).
The genus is distributed mainly in Asia, with a few species
known from Europe and North America (World Spider Catalog 2025). In this paper, we record Piratula from India for the
first time and describe a new species.
All measurements are in millimetres (mm). Length of palp and leg segments are presented as follows: total [femur,
patella, tibia, metatarsus (except for palp), tarsus]. The distribution map was generated using QGIS 3.34.9 (QGIS
Development Team 2023). The specimens examined are deposited at the National Zoological Collections, Zoological
Survey of India, Kolkata, India (NZC-ZSI). Abbreviations used in the text. ALE—anterior lateral eye; AME—anterior
median eye; do—dorsal; pl—prolateral; PLE—posterior lateral eye; plv—prolateral ventral; PME—posterior median
eye; rl—retrolateral; rlv—retrolateral ventral; v—ventral; I–IV—1st to 4th leg.
We express our gratitude to Dr Dhriti Banerjee, Director of the Zoological Survey of India for her unwavering
support and providing necessary facilities for completing this work, and to Mr Chandan Bera, Arachnida section, ZSI,
Kolkata for his curatorial assistance. We extend our heartfelt thanks to two anonymous reviewers for their constructive
comments on an earlier version of the manuscript, and to Dr Adalberto J. Santos, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais,
Brazil for his editorial efforts.
