Pachistopelma rufonigrum Pocock 1901

Pachistopelma rufonigrum Pocock, 1901

Pachistopelma rufonigrum Pocock 1901: 548; Mello-Leitão 1923: 337; Roewer 1942:256. Pachystopelma rufonigrum: Simon 1903: 959; Petrunkevitch 1911: 82.

Avicularia pulchra Mello-Leitão 1933: 171, fig. 33.

Avicularia recifiensis Struchen and Brändle 1996:2, f 1–4.

Pachystopelma rufonigrum Bertani, 2012: 29, figs 29–45, 58–60, 67, 76–78. Hapalotremus scintillans (Mello-Leitão, 1929) new synonymy.

Holotype female: Brazil, Pernambuco. Caruaru. Bento Pickel leg. Collected in bromeliads. Museu Nacional, Rio de Janeiro (215), not examined.

Hapalotremus scintillans was described from a single female from Caruaru (Pernambuco) (Figure 4) and the type material has been listed as “not located” in the annotated check list by Silva-Moreira et al. (2010) of Arachnida type specimens deposited in the Museu Nacional, Rio de Janeiro. Considering the type locality and the fact that the specimen was captured from inside bromeliads, H. scintillans could be a junior synonym of Iridopelma hirsutum Pocock, 1901 or Pachistopelma rufonigrum Pocock, 1901 (Bertani 2012). Both species had field records indicating a strict dependency on bromeliads occurring in the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest (Santos et al. 2004; Bertani 2012). Hapalotremus scintillans was originally described under Dolichothele, but later synonymized by Raven (1985). The general shape of the spermathecae presented by Bücherl et al. (1971) and Schmidt (2002) of other species originally described under Dolichothele, now Hapalotremus exilis, is also consistent with that of Pachistopelma rufonigrum (Bertani 2012). Moreover, the collector of the holotype of H. scintillans, D. Bento Pickel, is the same for the captured holotype of Avicularia pulchra Mello-Leitão, 1933, at Pernambuco state. Recently, Bertani (2012) considered A. pulchra a junior synonym of P. rufonigrum due to its geographical distribution and colour pattern. For these reasons and all the generic characteristics from the original description, Hapalotremus scintillans is a junior synonym of Pachistopelma rufonigrum.