A post-graduate student from Maharashtra has discovered a new jumping spider species from a hill located in the heart of Pune city.
Christened as Okinawicius tekdi, the species belongs to genus Okinawicius Prószyński, first described from India in 2016. Tekdi in Marathi translates to ‘hill’ and the species was named as a tribute to the geographical origin of the animal.
Atharva Kulkarni, a student of environmental science, was pursuing his thesis on studying the diversity of spiders on the Baner hill, when he bumped into the species.
“It was February 6, 2023 when I was studying the area located in the Baner hills. That is when I came across the species on a Ficus (fig) tree,” he told Down To Earth (DTE).
The findings have been published in the Journal of Arachnology.
Kulkarni, who has been studying spiders for academic purposes, said, “My interest in the spider grew as it looked familiar to the rare O. Takarensis species. But I wanted to find if it could be a new species,” he added.
He said he first found a male and it took nearly four hours to find a female spider which was camouflaged with the colour and texture of the tree.
“I didn’t have any equipment to take pictures and immediately called my friend Madhura Godbole to help me document the species. I also collected a specimen and sent it to Rishikesh Tripathi, an arachnophile who has been a part of identifying 22 species from India,” he explained.
Tripathi, a PhD scholar at the department of zoology in Christ College (Autonomous), Kerala, said he conducted the morphological study and after detailed analysis, found the species to be unique and a new one. He added two members of the genus already known in India are Okinawicius daitaricus (Prószyński, 1992) and Okinawicius modestus (Simon, 1885).
The spider is distinguished by its morphological characteristics, especially in the female genitalia.
“A notable identification feature is the membranous coils of the copulatory ducts, which lie parallel to the surface,” the findings said. It is this peculiar feature identified by Prószyński (2016) that led to the reclassification of eight species from the Pseudicius genus described by Eugene Simon in 1885 to Okinawicius.
Tripathi said the male O. tekdi sp. nov. resembles O. tokarensis discovered in 1987. But it also shares similarities in male palp (a pair of sensory appendages that arise from the mouthparts of crustaceans and insects) with species from the Afraflacilla genus, such as A. kurichiadensis and A. avadavathurensis, both described from India in 2022.
This similarity underscores the importance of examining the female counterparts of the Afraflacilla genus, as only one female has been described among the six known species from India, the study noted.
Kulkarni said the discovery of a new species from an urban landscape highlights the need to conserve urban flora and fauna and study them more.
“The species was later found on confluence of rivers Ram and Mula, about two km away from the Baner hills. It has been seen on plumeria, Ficus and Morinda trees, but its habitat is still unknown,” he said, adding that more studies in this direction are needed.