Abstract
An adult male of Anoploscelus lesserti Laurent, 1946 from Burundi, deposited in the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) with a regenerated right chelicera is illustrated and discussed. Simultaneously, this constitutes the first record of the genus Anoploscelus Pocock, 1897 for Burundi.
In early 2023, whilst working in the collections at the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA), we discovered a male of Anoploscelus lesserti Laurent, 1946 from Burundi with cheliceral regeneration. Simultaneously, this constitutes the first record of the genus Anoploscelus Pocock, 1897 in Burundi. The specimen is readily assigned to Anoploscelus owing to the incrassate femur III, transverse fovea, and palpal bulb morphology (Fig. 1). The specimen (BE_RMCA_ARA.Ara.247722) has the following data: Mt. Ruvubu, Muremera, Cibitoke Province, Burundi (3°6′40″S, 30°22′23″E), 20/08/2016. A revision of the genus should be forthcoming (R. Gallon pers. comm.), and for this reason we do not provide full detailed measurements (e.g. the description format used by the senior author in her taxonomic contributions on theraphosids) of the specimen. However, to quantify the identification of the male and separate it from the type species, we provide here a diagnosis, and describe the palpal bulb (keels follow the terminology of Bertani, 2000) in this genus.
Many thanks to Danni Sherwood for providing me with this paper.
Sherwood, Danniella, Rudy Jocqué, and Arnaud Henrard. “A regenerated chelicera in an African tarantula, Anoploscelus lesserti Laurent, 1946 (Araneae: Theraphosidae)”, Animal Taxonomy and Ecology (published online ahead of print 2024), doi: https://doi.org/10.1556/1777.2024.00051
