Bioacoustics of Sphingius gracilis

Remarks. The genus Scotophaeoides was established by Schenkel (1963) and for more than 40 years remained monotypic, and only known from a single female, the holotype of Scotophaeoides sinensis Schenkel, 1963 , collected from Canton. In 1986, Prof. Da-Xiang Song examined Schenkel’s type specimen deposited in the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, and illustrated the eye region and chelicerae, but limited by various conditions, he maintained it in Gnaphosidae . Song et al. (2004) later mentioned the species, but only referred to the original description. However, in his original sketches (kept in Hebei University), there is an anterior view of the chelicerae, which indicates that this species is similar to some Corinnidae . Murphy examined the single type specimen, and stated that S. sinensis was not a gnaphosid but possibly a Castianeirine, Corinnidae ( Murphy 2007 ) . Species of the genus Sphingius resemble, to some extent, Castianeira Keyserling in general appearance. For example, both mimic ants, but Sphingius differs from the latter by the male palp with median apophysis, embolus and conductor, while in the latter the male palp has only one outgrowth, the embolus. While examining the spider specimens collected from Nanning City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, by Prof. Yongqiang Zhang, we found four female specimens (see above), whose genital organs were identical to those of S. sinensis , while other characters also conformed to the diagnostic characters of the genus Sphingius . We also considered the geographic distribution (Guangdong is next to Guangxi), and therefore here transfer the species Scotophaeoides sinensis to Sphingius , thus placing Scotophaeoides as a junior synonym of Sphingius .