Scientists from the Universidad de La República in Uruguay have described three new species of tarantulas from northern Argentina.
The newly discovered Melloleitaoina tarantulas belong to the same spider subfamily as the Costa Rican Tiger Rump (Cyclosternum fasciatum), shown here. Image credit: David Rimeš.
The spider subfamily Theraphosinae to which the three new species belong is a large group of tarantulas distributed exclusively in the New World.
The three new species, named Melloleitaoina mutquina, Melloleitaoina uru and Melloleitaoina yupanqui, live in the northern parts of Argentina.
Their description has been published in the open-access journal ZooKeys.
Melloleitaoina mutquina, for example, has its name derived from the specific epithet mutquina, a noun which means place or thing to smell in Quichua language.
This image shows the newly discovered tarantula Melloleitaoina yupanqui. Image credit: Perafán C, Pérez-Miles F.
This poetic name refers to the locality of Mutquín, where this species is distributed and denotes the aroma of the flora of the region that emerges after rain, perfuming the village of aromatic herbs.
Melloleitaoina uru was inspired by an ancient legend Quichua about the Inca princess Uru, who because of her whims and bad government was transformed by the gods into a spider and forced to endlessly work weaving.
Melloleitaoina yupanqui was named to honor to the most important Argentine musician of folklore Atahualpa Yupanqui, pseudonym of Héctor Roberto Chavero Aramburu.
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Perafán C, Pérez-Miles F. 2014. Three new species of Melloleitaoina Gerschman & Schiapelli, 1960 (Araneae, Mygalomorphae, Theraphosidae) from northern Argentina. ZooKeys 404: 117–129; doi: 10.3897/zookeys.404.6243
