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Photo#720927
Cicurina - Cicurina simplex - male

Cicurina - Cicurina simplex - Male
Cowichan Valley, British Columbia, Canada
November 5, 2012
Size: ~7mm body length
Found under a board. I'm thinking C. idahoana. The palp is different from the earlier C. simplex, lacking that middle-third fattening of the RTA Rod mentioned. Looks like a fair match for the diagram in Chamberlin & Ivie 1940. The dark coloration would also be consistent with what I've noticed in local C. idahoana females.

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Cicurina - Cicurina simplex - male Cicurina - Cicurina simplex - male Cicurina - Cicurina simplex - male Cicurina - Cicurina simplex - male Cicurina - Cicurina simplex - male

ID from Rod Crawford
"I'm afraid the Cicurina is just another simplex. The RTA of simplex is pretty variable but it always has the wider part in the middle that seems to be wholly lacking in the idahoana group. The embolus is similar in the two."

Oh well, there goes my way of telling the two species apart by color.

Moved from Spiders.

..
Hmmm, too close for me to make a call. Curious to hear what Rod says. Certainly seems to be the one or the other.

-K

 
Ventral palp
I just noticed there's some strangeness going on in the ventral palp view. The projection on the retrolateral side that the embolus hooks over a bit (conductor?) is sticking out at quite an angle, way more than on the C. simplex. I found some ventral diagrams here:
http://web.pdx.edu/~pdx02141/Projects/Cicurina_revision.html
Doesn't seem like it should be doing that from the diagram for C. idahoana...

 
..
Not sure what you mean with your last sentence. Thanks for pointing out the Dupérré drawings -- too bad they are so small.

If I have to pick a species from that drawing of Nadine's, my money is (still?) on simplex... but reading the introduction ("Cicurina is variable. Extremely variable. So variable that it took us about 4 years and the examination of thousands and thousands of specimens") is enough to make one never want to see another Cicurina specimen again. :-)

-K

 
...
I just meant that in the diagram for C. idahoana, the part the embolus is hooking over (in my image, I can't see the embolus hooking over it in the drawing) isn't sticking out at such an extreme angle. Not sure what the part is called.

The variation in the female C. arizona images on the page is just scary! I wonder how much variability exists in the males.

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