14 DAY TRIAL // A group of investigators from Instituto Butantan, in Brazil, recently discovered three new species of Fufius wafer trapdoor spiders in South America. The arthropods range from Guatemala to southern Brazil, and were never before characterized by researchers.
The beautiful spiders were named F. minusculus, F., jalapensis and F. candango. Details of their morphology, behavior and range were published in the November 19 issue of the journal ZooKeys.
Spiders of this type are renowned for building wafer-or cork-like doors to their burrows. However, the genus Fufius stands out from the crowd through the fact that it does not use burrows. Instead, these spiders build prolonged silk tubes inside crevices, e! Science News reports.
“The 3 new species described in the paper as well as the redescription of an old species and the description of a female of another species formerly known from male specimen aids in understanding the morphological variability of the species in this little known mygalomorph genus,” says study leader Dr. Rogerio Bertani, from IB.