Theraphosa
| Theraphosa | ||||||||||||
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Theraphosa stirmi |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Theraphosa | ||||||||||||
| Thorell , 1870 |
Theraphosa is a genus of tarantulas (Theraphosidae) from the subfamily Theraphosinae .
description
The genus Theraphosa includes the largest spiders in the world, such as the Goliath tarantula ( Theraphosa blondi ). All Theraphosa species reach a body length of over 9 cm in the female sex. Males stay a bit smaller and are much more slender. The leg span in both sexes is between 15 and over 25 cm, depending on body length. They are soil dwellers who live in self-dug tubes, abandoned rodent burrows or in cavities in the root network of trees.
Toxicity
Due to the mechanical effect of the up to 2.5 cm long bite claws , the bite is painful, but not dangerous for healthy, adult people. The poisonous effect is low. Some components of the poison are peptides that have an effect on the function of the potassium channels , as could be proven in Theraphosa blondi by coupling HPLC with mass spectrometry .
distribution
Theraphosa species are native to the rainforests of northeastern South America ( Venezuela , Guyana , Suriname , French Guiana, and Brazil ).
Systematics
The World Spider Catalog currently lists three species for the genus Theraphosa . (As of April 2016)
- Theraphosa apophysis ( Tinter , 1991)
- Theraphosa blondi ( Latreille , 1804)
- Theraphosa stirmi Rudloff & Weinmann , 2010
Web links
Theraphosa in the World Spider Catalog
literature
- Uwe Dost: The cosmos book of terraristics. 2nd Edition. Franckh Kosmos Verlag, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-440-10129-0 .
- Volker von Wirth: tarantulas, fascinating and exotic. 3. Edition. GU, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-7742-6821-0 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ C. Legros, ML Célérier, M. Henry, C. Guette: Nanospray analysis of the venom of the tarantula Theraphosa leblondi: a powerful method for direct venom mass fingerprinting and toxin sequencing. In: Rapid Commun Mass Spectrom. 18 (10), 2004, pp. 1024-1032. PMID 15150824
- ↑ Natural History Museum of the Burgergemeinde Bern: World Spider Catalog Version 17.0 - Theraphosa . Retrieved April 25, 2016.
- ^ Jan-Peter Rudolff, Dirk Weinmann: A new gigant tarantula from Guyana. In: Arthropoda Scientia. 1 (1) 2010, publisher ZAG Wirbellose e. V., Dessau-Roßlau. ISSN 1866-5896