Kalaw
Well-Known Member
In November last year, a new spider species of the Masteria genus, which was named Masteria boggildi after the renowned Danish arachnologist Ole Boggild, who sadly passed away in 2022, was discovered within the Africa Dome of Randers Regnskov. Seeing as the masteria genus is mostly native to Latin America (albeit with some populations in Southeast Asia and Oceania), it is thought that they arrived at Randers through unnoticed eggs on plants that were imported from Costa Rica, although the characteristics of the spider allegedly bare a closer resemblance to species found in Ecuador, a country that to my knowledge, the zoo has never imported plants from, making its native range difficult to locate. The species was discovered by two biologists, Jorgen Lissner and Sean Birk Bek Craig, and has since been located in another one of the zoo's tropical walkthrough domes, although I am not sure which one. It is likely that the spiders have already established a breeding population within the Dome and have been living there for years, which would make this the first established population of any Masteria in European history.
This news is a few months old now, and came to my attention through the latest addition of the Zoo Grapevine magazine. However, I thought it was worth posting here as I have never heard of a new species being discovered within a zoo - there have been instances of zoos discovering that species they already held and knew of deserved to be recognised as distinct at a species level, but this is different because the taxa in question was entirely unknown to science prior. If there are any other similar instances, I would be fascinated to hear of them. Apologies if this has already been reported on ZooChat, but I could not find any information on it.
There is very little information on this discovery online, but I could find the following articles:
https://bioone.org/journals/arachnology/volume-19/issue-6/arac.2023.19.6.888/A-new-Masteria
araneae - Masteria boggildi
Masteria boggildi — Wikipédia
This news is a few months old now, and came to my attention through the latest addition of the Zoo Grapevine magazine. However, I thought it was worth posting here as I have never heard of a new species being discovered within a zoo - there have been instances of zoos discovering that species they already held and knew of deserved to be recognised as distinct at a species level, but this is different because the taxa in question was entirely unknown to science prior. If there are any other similar instances, I would be fascinated to hear of them. Apologies if this has already been reported on ZooChat, but I could not find any information on it.
There is very little information on this discovery online, but I could find the following articles:
https://bioone.org/journals/arachnology/volume-19/issue-6/arac.2023.19.6.888/A-new-Masteria
araneae - Masteria boggildi
Masteria boggildi — Wikipédia