This one is for Harry Potter fans.
There are about 2400 species of Wolf Spiders (Lycosidae) on Earth. They can be found in a wide range of habitats including our homes. Spiderlings of this group are known for a behaviour called ballooning. They move through the air by releasing one or more silk threads to catch the wind, causing them to become airborne. As a consequence, wolf spiders have wide distributions.
This new wolf spider species was named after Aragog, the famous fictional spider from the Harry Potter book series by J.K. Rowling. The authors state that there are similarities between this new species and the animatronic version used in the film Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
For the experts: With over 2400 species in 123 genera, Lycosidae is one of the largest spider families (WSC 2017). For over two hundred years, the type genus Lycosa Latreille, 1804 have accumulated large-sized wolf spiders from all over the world. Thus, with 218 nominal species, this genus is distributed in all zoogeographical regions (WSC 2017). Almost none of the species currently classified in Lycosa appear to be related to the type species—L. tarantula (Linnaeus, 1758); hence, the genus is polyphyletic and should be divided into several genera. This process has been already started; for example, in Australia and New Zealand where many of large wolf spiders have been removed from Lycosa (Roewer 1955, 1959, 1960; Vink 2002; Framenau & Baehr 2016). Also, some Holarctic, Neotropic and Afrotropic species were transferred from Lycosa to other genera (for a complete list of references see WSC 2017). In the Palaearctic, Lycosa is represented by 60 species (WSC 2017) and remains almost unrevised. From the southern Palaearctic, Saharo-Gobian desert region (Yemel’yanov 1974), 36 species of Lycosa have been recorded to date, 6 of which are poorly described (WSC 2017).
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