Four new tarantula species identified in Western Ghats

A researcher described four new species of tarantulas, including one new genus, from India’s Western Ghats, a chain of mountains running along the country’s west coast.

“Most people in India are not even aware that there are tarantulas in India when there are more than 60 species in the country,” Zeeshan Mirza, from the Max Planck Institute for Biology in Germany, who found and described the species, told Mongabay.

The large, fuzzy spiders live in tree hollows, along streams and forest paths, and in forest patches. They exhibit interesting behaviours, such as females carrying their egg sacs under their mouth parts (or chelicerae) or creating hammock-like web structures to protect their eggs.

One of the new species, named Haploclastus bratocolonus (meaning “tree dweller”), makes its home in hollow trees along rivers. Another species, Haploclastus montanus, was found living at elevations higher than 2,000 metres (6,600 feet) in mountain forests, making it one of the highest-living tarantulas known from the region. Some of the new species were found in the rare small fragments of remaining shola forest surrounded by tea plantations.

Among the species was an entirely new genus of tarantulas called Cilantica, named after the Tamil word for spider. They can be identified by the unique scattered pattern of curved bristles on their bodies,...

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