Acanthopelma rufescens F.O.P.-Cambridge, 1897

♂ Male described

Type Locality and Records

Type locality

Original Description

Pickard-Cambridge, F. O. (1897). Arachnida - Araneida and Opiliones. In Biologia Centrali-Americana, Zoology. London, 2: 1-40.

Distribution

Guatemala

Type Locality: Guatemala, no locality given beyond the country

Etymology

Latin rufescens, "becoming reddish", for the rufous silky pubescence that covers the carapace, chelicerae, sternum and legs. Pickard-Cambridge does not state the derivation, but his colour description supplies it in the next line.

Specimen Records (1)

BMNH 78 ♂ Holotype Guatemala

Guatemala, no locality recorded beyond the country

col. F. C. Sarg

Holotype male, and the only specimen of the species ever recorded. F. O. Pickard-Cambridge (1897) gives it as "Type, male, in coll. Godman & Salvin" with the habitat "GUATEMALA (Sarg)", and adds "A single adult male" - no register number, no locality, no date. The Godman-Salvin collection passed to the Natural History Museum, London, which is presumably how the number here arose; the World Spider Catalog records no type repository for this species, so the accession is not corroborated by either paper available. Total length 16.5 mm, carapace 7 x 5.5 mm. Figured on Tab. II figs. 13, 13a-d: sternum, tarsus IV from beneath, tarsus and protarsus I from beneath, the spurs at the apex of tibia I, and the palpal bulb from in front.

Genitalia

Male palp © F. O. Pickard-Cambridge (1897), Biologia Centrali-Americana, Arachnida-Araneidea vol. 2, Tab. II fig. 13d - bulb of the left pedipalp from in front. Scan: archive.org (Missouri Botanical Garden)

Taxonomic History

1897
Acanthopelma rufescens F. O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1897 - the type species of the genus, described from one adult male collected in Guatemala by F. C. Sarg. Genus and species share a single page, 34, of the second Araneidea volume of the Biologia Centrali-Americana. The sheet carrying that page is dated September 1897 in the volume's own signature line, which fixes the month.
Pickard-Cambridge placed the genus in the Theraphosinae while saying plainly that he was not sure of it, preferring "for the present" not to follow Simon's Chaetopelmateae. The genus has had two species ever since - this one and A. beccarii.
1986
Smith (1986, repeated in the 1987 second edition, and again in 1995) figured the male in his identification guides, the 1995 account running to eleven figures.
1996
Pérez-Miles et al. (1996) examined the holotype and moved the genus out of the Theraphosinae, to the Ischnocolinae incertae sedis: it lacks urticating hairs, bulbal keels and the subfamily's other synapomorphies. Pickard-Cambridge's doubt was borne out.
2001
Rudloff (2001) redescribed and re-figured the male in a paper given over to the genus. He took A. annae Reichling, 1997 out of it into Reichlingia gen. nov., and judged A. beccarii to be no Acanthopelma either, which leaves this species as effectively the whole of the genus as originally understood.
Nothing has been added since. The female is unknown, and the type locality has never been narrowed below "Guatemala".

Bibliography (6)

Pickard-Cambridge, F. O. (1897). Arachnida - Araneida and Opiliones. In Biologia Centrali-Americana, Zoology. London, 2: 1-40.

Smith, A. (1986). The tarantula: classification and identification guide. Fitzgerald Publishing, London, 179 pp.

Smith, A. (1987). The tarantula: classification and identification guide (second edition). Fitzgerald Publishing, London, 179 pp.

Smith, A. (1995). Tarantula Spiders: Tarantulas of the U.S.A. and Mexico. Fitzgerald Publishing, London.

Pérez-Miles, F. (1996). Systematic revision and cladistic analysis of Theraphosinae (Araneae: Theraphosidae). Mygalomorph 1: 33-68.

PDF

Rudloff, J. (2001). Anmerkungen zur systematischen Stellung von Acanthopelma rufescens F.O.P.-Cambridge, 1897 und Acanthopelma annae Reichling, 1997 (Ischnocolinae: Theraphosidae: Mygalomorphae), sowie die Einrichtung einer neuen Gattung Reichlingia gen. nov. Arthropoda 9(3): 14-20.