A New Colonial Anelosimus Spider From Suriname (Araneae: Theridiidae)

Until recently, only a few colonial spiders were known. The recent increase in field work in the tropics revealed a number of new colonial species (Buskirk, 1981). Some of these colonial spiders belong t o the theridiid genera Anelosimus and Achaearanea. The genus Anelosimus in America was revised by Levi, 1956, and the knowledge updated in 1963 and 1972, with new species described in 1967 and 1979. Those Anelosimus species known t o be colonial are: A. studiosus, A. eximius, A. rupununi and A. lorenzo. Another species has now been found in Suriname. While reexamining some of the related species in preparation for this description, it was found that the synonymy of A. jabaquara Levi 1956 with A. dubiosus (Keyserling, 1891) in Levi (1963) was in error. While A. jabaquara was illustrated in 1956, A. dubiosus is here illustrated for the first t ime since its description in 189 1 (Fig. 4).