Selenocosmia

History of Selenocosmia

• 1871 – Genus erected

• Austrian arachnologist Anton Ausserer establishes the genus Selenocosmia within Theraphosidae, with Mygale javanensis (Walckenaer, 1837) designated as the type species (now Selenocosmia javanensis).

• Early work (late 1800s–early 1900s)

• Classic arachnologists like Thorell, Kulczyński, Hogg, Simon, and others describe many of the “core” species from Indonesia, New Guinea, India, and Australia (e.g. S. crassipes, S. stirlingi, S. papuana).

• Synonymy & name shuffling

• Several genera were proposed for closely related spiders: Phrictus (L. Koch, 1874), Phlogius (Simon, 1887), Psophopoeus (Thorell, 1897) and Selenopelma (Schmidt & Krause, 1995). Later work, especially Raven (2000), treated these as junior synonyms of Selenocosmia, and the World Spider Catalog currently lists Phlogius, Phrictus, Psophopoeus and Selenopelma as synonyms under Selenocosmia (though hobbyists still use “Phlogius” a lot).

• Transfers out of the genus

• A number of species originally placed in Selenocosmia have been moved to other genera (e.g. S. hainana → Cyriopagopus hainanus, S. huwena → Cyriopagopus schmidti, S. obscura → Phlogiellus obscurus, etc.), reflecting that Selenocosmia has been something of a “catch-all” for Selenocosmiinae over the years.

• Modern diagnosis

• Recent Chinese work (Yu et al. 2021; Lin et al. 2022) and the current Wikipedia summary note that Selenocosmia species can be distinguished (provisionally) by: a reduced, shallow apical keel on the male embolus, lack of dense retrolateral bristle tufts on tibia/metatarsus IV, and a stridulatory apparatus using lyra hairs on the maxillae. But these studies haven’t compared all species, so the diagnosis may not hold universally.

• Ongoing revisions & non-monophyly

• New species are still being described (e.g. S. anubis, S. qiani, S. longiembola, S. zhangzhengi from China, 2021–2022), and recent phylogenetic work suggests that Selenocosmia as currently defined is not monophyletic, meaning it will probably be split or rearranged further in the future.

General biology snapshot

• Subfamily Selenocosmiinae (Old World, no urticating hairs).

• Range: SE Asia, India/Pakistan, New Guinea, Australia.

• Many species are large, fossorial, defensive tarantulas, known as “whistling” or “barking” spiders because they can stridulate using maxillary lyra hairs and cheliceral strikers.

For the pet trade, the best-known representative is Selenocosmia crassipes (Queensland whistling/barking spider).