Revision of Indian Ischnothelidae (Arachnida: Araneae) and descriptions of two new species of Indothele Coyle, 1995
Abstract
Two new species of Indothele Coyle, 1995 are described from the Western Ghats of India: I. amboli Kadam, Tripathi & Sherwood sp. nov. (♂♀) from Amboli in Maharashtra, and I. silentvalley Tripathi, Kadam & Sherwood sp. nov. (♂♀) from Silent Valley National Park in Kerala. Images of the type material of I. dumicola (Pocock, 1900), the type species, are presented to complement its identification. Additionally, the male of I. mala Coyle, 1995 is described for the first time. We transfer the misplaced Ischnothele indicola Tikader, 1969 to the genus Macrothele Ausserer, 1871 (Macrothelidae), creating the new combination Macrothele indicola comb. nov. A catalogue of Indian Ischnothelidae and their currently known distribution is mapped.
References
Coyle F.A. 1995. A revision of the funnelweb mygalomorph spider subfamily Ischnothelinae (Araneae, Dipluridae). Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 226: 1–133.
Opatova V., Hamilton C.A., Hedin M., Montes de Oca L., Král J. & Bond J.E. 2020. Phylogenetic systematics and evolution of the spider infraorder Mygalomorphae using genomic scale data. Systematic Biology 69 (4): 671–707. https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/syz064
Pocock R.I. 1900. The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma. Arachnida. Taylor & Francis, London. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.48423
Raven R.J. 1985. A new and interesting species of Cethegus Thorell (Ischnothelinae, Dipluri dae) from South Australia. Records of the South Australian Museum 19 (2): 15–17.
Tikader B.K. 1969. Studies on spider fauna of Khasi and Jaintia hills, Assam, India. Part III. Journal of the Assam Science Society 11: 154–163.
Sen S., Dhali D.C., Saha S. & Raychaudhuri D. 2015. Spiders (Araneae: Arachnida) of reserve forests of Dooars: Gorumara National Park, Chapramari Wildlife Sanctuary and Mahananda Wildlife Sanctuary. World Scientific News 20: 1–339.
Shimojana M. & Haupt J. 1998. Taxonomy and natural history of the funnel-web spider genus Macrothele (Araneae: Hexathelidae: Macrothelinae) in the Ryukyu Islands (Japan) and Taiwan. Species Diversity 3: 1–15. https://doi.org/10.12782/specdiv.3.1
Xu X. & Yin C.M. 2001. A new species of the genus Macrothele from China (Araneae: Hexathelidae). Journal of Natural Science of Hunan Normal University 24 (3): 65–66, 72.
Xu X., Yin C.M. & Griswold C.E. 2002. A new species of the spider genus Macrothele from the Gaoligong Mountains, Yunnan, China (Araneae: Hexathelidae). The Pan-Pacific Entomologist 78 (2): 116–119.
World Spider Catalog 2024. World Spider Catalog. Version 25.5. Natural History Museum Bern. Available from https://wsc.nmbe.ch [accessed 1 Oct. 2024]. https://doi.org/10.24436/2
Copyright (c) 2025 Rishikesh Tripathi, Gautam Kadam, Danniella Sherwood, Ambalaparambil Vasu Sudhikumar

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Creative Commons Copyright Notices
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are NOT PERMITTED to post their submitted work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on personal websites) prior to publication, as it may lead to nomenclatural issues.
