Lasiocyano sazimai
Common name: Iridescent Blue Tarantula
♀ Female described ♂ Male described
Female Type Locality and Records
Type locality
Original Description
Distribution
Type Locality: Brazil, state of Bahia, Andaraí, Parque Nacional da Chapada Diamantina (S12°46'9.21'' W41°28'6.79'')
Etymology
The specific name is a patronym in honor of Dr. Ivan Sazima, an important Brazilian zoologist who was the first researcher to collect exemplars of this species in the decades of 1970 and 1980. These specimens remained as the sole exemplars of the species
Taxonomic History
- 2026 Marquezin-Gomes, Galleti-Lima, Morales & Guadanucci (2026) ran the most extensive morphometric analysis yet attempted in Theraphosidae specifically to test how far morphology can separate this species from Lasiodora. Linear and geometric morphometrics, multivariate statistics, discriminant analyses and cross-validation all failed: extensive overlap, high intraspecific variation and heavy overfitting meant none of the approaches gave reliable diagnostic separation.
- Two characters survive, and they are the ones the genus was erected on: the absence of stridulatory setae (present on coxae I–II in Lasiodora) and the blue-purplish setae covering the legs, carapace and chelicerae. The authors make no nomenclatural change — the finding is about the limits of morphology, not about this name.