Genus Curicaberis

Curicaberis Rheims, 2015

"The generic name is a noun taken from the Mexican culture. "Curicaberis" is the sky and the sun God of the Tarascan people (an Indian tribe west of Mexico). He gave the people laws and the calendar. Gender is masculine."(1)

32 species, 4 in our range.(2)(1)

Males: 7.2-15.5mm

Females: 9.0-18.4mm(1)

Occurs in the new world, from southern United States down to Costa Rica in Central America.(1)

C. abnormis - AZ, CA(3)

C. bibranchiatus - AZ, NM(3)

C. ferrugineus - southeastern United States to northern Guatemala(1)

C. minax - *see note under remarks section

C. peninsulanus - CA (perhaps only coastal)(3)

Species transferred from Olios to the new genus Curicaberis by Rheims, 2015.(2)(1)

*The WSC(2) also lists Curicaberis minax with a USA & Mexico range but this contradicts the solely southwestern Mexico range listed in Rheims, 2015(1). Of the taxonomic references for the species, two of them do list Arizona, though it's unknown to us why Rheims, 2015 omitted that locality; perhaps the specimens were lost (speculation, M.H.) and could not be verified. The first to report it from the Santa Rita Mountains, Arizona was Banks, 1901a:585 and he said, "it appears to belong to this Mexican species, previously unknown in our country [USA]." Following Banks' paper, ten years later, Petrunkevitch, 1911:500, included the Arizona collection locality in his own publication. One thing of note is that the Santa Rita Mountains are around 9000 feet in elevation where Banks listed his specimen from; and Petrunkevitch listed his Guerrero, Mexico specimen localities from 7000-9000 ft in elevation. We haven't reviewed all the collection locality coordinates that the newest revision (Rheims, 2015(1)) lists, but if they are also higher elevation, or hovering around 7000-9000 feet, perhaps that's significant.

World Spider Catalog (2015). World Spider Catalog. Natural History Museum Bern, online at http://wsc.nmbe.ch, version 16.5, accessed on 09/25/2015