Saltonia incerta
| Saltonia incerta | |
|---|---|
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Class: | Arachnida |
| Order: | Araneae |
| Suborder: | Araneomorphae |
| Family: | Dictynidae |
| Genus: | Saltonia Chamberlin & Ivie, 1942 |
| Species: | S. incerta |
| Binomial name | |
| Saltonia incerta (Banks, 1898) | |
 | |
| Synonyms | |
|
Cybaeodes incerta | |
Saltonia incerta is a rare spider species, only known from California, USA, where it occurs on the shores of the Salton Sea, among salt-crusts in several dry or intermittent lake-beds, and from a small island in the Gulf of California. All of the few collected specimens were collected during March and April near salt springs, salt water or salt marshes. Its colulus is similar to that of two genera of intertidal zone spiders of the family Desidae, Paratheuma and Desis. Genetic evidence suggests it is closely related to Paratheuma and the fully aquatic species Argyroneta aquatica.
Before it was placed into the family Dictynidae by Lehtinen in 1967, it was grouped under the family Agelenidae. Before that, it was at times considered to belong to the Clubionidae, thus living up to its species name incerta which is Latin for "uncertain".
References
- Banks, N. (1898). Some new spiders. Canad. Ent. 30:185-188.
- Chamberlin, R. V. & W. Ivie. (1942). A hundred new species of American spiders. Bull. Univ. Utah 32(13):1-117.
- Crews, S. C., & Gillespie, R. G. (2005). Evolutionary Insights From the Disjunct Distribution of the Salt Flat Endemic Spider Saltonia incerta Banks (Araneae: Dictynidae) in Southwestern North America. In Geologic and Biotic Perspectives on Late Cenozoic Drainage History of the Southwestern Great Basin and Lower Colorado River Region: Conference Abstracts (p. 7).
- Lehtinen, P.T. (1967). Classification of the Cribellate spiders and some allied families, with notes on the evolution of the suborder Araneomorpha. Ann. Zool. Fennici 4:199-467
- Roth, V.D. & Brown W.L. (1975). Comments on the spider Saltonia incerta Banks (Agelenidae?). J. Arachnol. 3:53-56. PDF
- Spagna, J. C., Crews, S. C., & Gillespie, R. G. (2010). Patterns of habitat affinity and Austral/Holarctic parallelism in dictynoid spiders (Araneae: Entelegynae). Invertebrate Systematics, 24(3), 238-257.