''Cantuaria wanganuiensis'' a species of

trapdoor spider Trapdoor spider is a common name that is used to refer to various spiders from several different groups that create burrows with a silk-hinged trapdoor to help them ambush prey. Several families within the infraorder Mygalomorphae contain trapdoo ...

endemic to

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

Taxonomy

This species was described as ''Korua wanganuiensis'' in 1945 by Valerie Todd from an immature male specimen collected near

Whanganui Whanganui (; ), also spelled Wanganui, is a city in the Manawatū-Whanganui region of New Zealand. The city is located on the west coast of the North Island at the mouth of the Whanganui River, New Zealand's longest navigable waterway. Whangan ...

. It was transferred to the ''

Cantuaria ''Cantuaria'' is a genus of South Pacific armored trapdoor spiders that was first described by Henry Roughton Hogg in 1902. From 1985 to 2006 it was merged with former genus ''Misgolas'', now '' Arbanitis''. Species it contains forty-three sp ...

'' genus in 1968 by

Ray Forster Raymond Robert Forster (19 June 1922 – 1 July 2000) was a New Zealand arachnologist and museum director. He was a Fellow of the Entomological Society of New Zealand. Biography Forster was born in Hastings, New Zealand in 1922, and was educat ...

who also described the female. The holotype is stored at

Otago Museum Tūhura Otago Museum is located in the city centre of Dunedin, New Zealand. It is adjacent to the University of Otago campus in Dunedin North, 1,500 metres northeast of the city centre. It is one of the city's leading attractions and has one of t ...

Description

The immature male (presumed to be subadult) is recorded at 15.5mm in length. The carapace and legs are reddish brown. The abdomen has dark patches dorsally. The female is recorded at 16.5mm in length. The carapace and legs are reddish brown. The abdomen is yellow brown.

Distribution

This species is only known from Whanganui, New Zealand.

Conservation status

Under the

New Zealand Threat Classification System The New Zealand Threat Classification System is used by the Department of Conservation to assess conservation priorities of species in New Zealand. The system was developed because the IUCN Red List, a similar conservation status system, had some ...

, this species is listed as Data Deficient with the qualifiers of "Data Poor: Size" and "Data Poor: Trend".

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q2621061 Spiders of New Zealand Spiders described in 1945 wanganuiensis