Tapinauchenius

Tapinauchenius is a New World arboreal tarantula genus first erected by Austrian arachnologist Anton Ausserer in 1871, to house Mygale plumipes—a species originally described by C. L. Koch in 1842 and shuffled through earlier catch-all genera before getting its own, more accurate home. The name combines Greek roots meaning “low” and “neck,” probably referring to the relatively flat carapace of these spiders.

Throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries, additional Tapinauchenius species were described from tropical South America and the Caribbean islands, gradually revealing a group of fast, leggy, tree-dwelling tarantulas with metallic or iridescent coloration and a notable lack of urticating hairs. For many years the genus moved around within the family Theraphosidae and was often lumped with other “aviculariine” tree spiders until more detailed anatomical and phylogenetic work became available.

A major modern turning point came in 2018, when Martin Hüsser published the first broad phylogenetic analysis of this group, describing new Tapinauchenius species (such as T. polybotes and T. rasti) and highlighting a distinct lineage that would later be recognized as the separate genus Amazonius. In 2022, Cifuentes & Bertani produced a comprehensive Zootaxa revision of Tapinauchenius, Psalmopoeus and Amazonius, formally reorganizing several species and transferring the former genus Pseudoclamoris into Tapinauchenius, which significantly reshaped the genus as understood by hobbyists and scientists alike.

Research is still very active: recent work has added new species from Ecuador (including T. montufari and others) and refined the placement of Tapinauchenius within the subfamily Psalmopoeinae. Today, Tapinauchenius represents a growing cluster of more than ten described species distributed across northern South America, Central America, and the Caribbean—prized in the hobby for their speed, intense colors, and sleek arboreal lifestyle, and in science as an important piece of the Neotropical tree-tarantula puzzle.