Subscribe
In the summer of 2023, techies Nisha B G and Chinmay Maliye visited the forests of Devarayanadurga in Tumakuru district of Karnataka.
The visit was on April 2, a Sunday afternoon, and precisely to explore spiders and their habitats in the hill ranges. The ‘arachnophiles’ decided to explore a spot which is said to be the origin of the Jayamangali river and found some spiders commonly known to them.
But around late afternoon, Nisha spotted a spider jumping out of dense leaf litter. The moment she saw the spider, she knew it was an undescribed species. She immediately called Chinmay, who was exploring habitats nearby. But the spider had gone.
“After another 30-45 minutes of search in the litter, we spotted the spider again,” Nisha said, adding she immediately clicked pictures and tried to search more, but could not find any others.
Excited about their potential find of a new species, they shared the pictures with arachnologist friend John Caleb. “They noted that the jumping spider was male and suspected that it may be a new genus altogether. But we did not have enough specimens to identify and dwell deeper into it,” she said.
Chinmay and Nisha had shared the pictures with another friend, Lohit Y T. A couple of months later, Lohit took a small group of children to explore the area and was fortunate to find more.
“Nisha and Chinmay located the spider at the hilltop, whereas I found the spider at the foothills, which have an aerial distance of about 2 km,” Lohit said.
He found male and female spiders in abundance in the area. Lohit clicked pictures, collected samples and sent them to John Caleb for analysis, anticipating it to be closely associated with a species Colopsus arkavathi from the Nandi Hills, described in 2022.
However, phylogenetic analysis in the laboratory revealed the species to be a new genus entirely and it was named Tenkana Jayamangali. The specimen was also analysed by three different labs—University of British Columbia, National Centre for Biological Science (NCBS) and Saveetha Medical College & Hospitals, Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences, Saveetha University, Chennai.
‘Tenkana’ meaning ‘south’ in Kannada. The name is to acknowledge all known species of the genus found in the southern part of the Indian subcontinent.
The authors who have described the species in the journal ZooKeys, recently noted that Tenkana appears to be an exclusively ground-dwelling group.
“It is often found among relatively complex microhabitats of shaded short grasses with dry leaf litter in groves or relatively simpler microhabitats in open, sunny, sparse short grasses associated with rocky outcrops in relatively dry habitats. Its movements are reminiscent of those of the unrelated ground-dwelling Stenaelurillus jumping spiders,” they observed.
Lohit said the male and female look entirely different. “The colour pattern of the male resembles the face of a panda and has a brownish abdomen. The female on the other hand is grey with some pattern,” he added.
He said at present it can be said the species is endemic to India. “In past three months, it has been sighted from Bannerghatta area in Bengaluru and Yercaudu, Tamil Nadu.”
Nisha said that the spider’s distribution seems to be widespread. “Recently, I went for bird watching with my father and we were about six km away from the location where we first spotted the spider. That is when we saw it in good numbers below a big tree, under its fallen leaves,” she said.
At present, there are three species documented under the genus Tenkana—Tenkana jayamangali, Tenkana arkavathi (discovered in 2022 from the Nandi hills, Karnataka) and Tenkana manu (present in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Sri Lanka).
Chinmay said more studies are needed to understand the insects’ habitat, breeding patterns and other ecological aspects such as threats.