Deserta tarantula

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Deserta tarantula
Systematics
Class : Arachnids (arachnida)
Order : Spiders (Araneae)
Subordination : Real spiders (Araneomorphae)
Family : Wolf spiders (Lycosidae)
Genre : Hogna
Type : Deserta tarantula
Scientific name
Hogna ingens
( Blackwall , 1857)

The Deserta or Madeira tarantula ( Hogna ingens , syn .: Lycosa ingens ) is a spider from the genus Hogna within the family of wolf spiders (Lycosidae).

features

With a body length of up to four centimeters, Hogna ingens is possibly the largest European spider and the largest member of the approximately 2,300 species of wolf spider family. It is similar to other large wolf spiders such as the Apulian tarantula and the South Russian tarantula .

Blackwall described the species as follows in 1857: The male is smaller than the female, but resembles it in color. His palpi are red-brown in color and covered with gray-brown hair.

distribution and habitat

It is an endemic whose range is limited to a valley in the northern end of the Madeira island of Deserta Grande . The Vale da Castanheira is approximately 2.8 kilometers long, the width varies between 180 and 400 meters, and the area is around 83 hectares . The valley is at an altitude of 150 to 350 meters.

The island is a restricted area that only a few biologists are allowed to enter. A conservation breeding program has been running at Bristol Zoo since 2016.

Way of life

Since there are no native, bottom-dwelling mammals in Vale da Castanheira, the species is one of the top predators of its small range. Their main prey consists of other invertebrates such as the black mold beetle or the introduced Portuguese millipede . However, adults have also been observed catching juveniles of the Madeira wall lizard .

Poison

The Deserta tarantula is said to be very poisonous, but there is no information about it in the recent medical literature.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Hogna ingens in the Red List of Threatened Species of IUCN 2016-3. Posted by: P. Cardoso, 2014. Retrieved December 13, 2016.
  2. ↑ John Blackwall: Notes on spiders, with descriptions of several species supposed to be new to arachnologists. In: The Annals and Magazine of Natural History. Volume 20, 1867, pp. 203-204. ( Online )
  3. ↑ Desertas Wolf Spider - Desertas Grande Islands, Madeira. Bristol Zoo Gardens, accessed July 3, 2019.

literature

  • Jörg Wunderlich: The spider fauna of the Macaronesian islands: taxonomy, ecology, biogeography and evolution. In: Contribution Araneol. 1992

Web links

Hogna ingens in the World Spider Catalog