Page:The Salticidae (Spiders) of Panama.djvu/7

 F. Cambridge ('01) listed two hundred and sixty-six species of Salticidae from all of Central America including many not in the collections studied by him and known only from records made by other students of the family. Petrunkevitch ('25) listed one hundred and six species including several conjectured to be present in Panama but not definitely recorded from the country. Among these were described eight species as new to science. Banks ('29) reported sixty-one species, mostly from the Canal zone. Twelve species were regarded as new to science. Chamberlin and Ivie ('36) described eighteen new species from my collection of 1928. Most of these have proved to be synonyms of known species and are referred to in the appropriate parts of this paper. From my collections of 1934, 1936, and 1939 I have separated out one hundred and seventy-two species. Among these eighty-one species are considered new and are described as such. Twenty-nine holotypes are accompanied by their allotypes. Twelve allotypes of previously known species have been identified and described in detail, and numerous hypotypes have also been described. Fourteen new genera have been established for those species which seemed to have no place among the known genera. Altogether, more than two hundred species of Salticids are now known from Panama.

The problem of the subdivision of the family Salticidae into subfamilies and smaller groups remains one of the major questions facing all arachnologists interested in the family. F. Cambridge ('01) divided all Central American Salticidae into two subfamilies, the Toxeinae and the Salticinae. He included in the former all which he considered pedunculate and in the latter all those not pedunculate. While most students of the family would disagree with Cambridge in respect to such a division into subfamilies, I believe he showed, on the whole, a good understanding of natural relationships in his groupings within the Salticinae. Simon ('01) in his great Histoire Naturelle des Araignees worked out a very complete but highly artificial system of classification for the family. He divided all Salticidae into three divisions, the Unidentati, Fissidentati, and the Pluridentati. Those with no teeth on the retromargin of the fang groove he placed with the Unidentati. In his Systema Aranearum, Petrunkevitch ('28) discussed the inadequacies of Simon's system but found no satisfactory alternative. This resulted in his making the same fundamental subdivision into three major divisions after which he arranged Simon's "Groupes" into twenty-three subfamilies. Throughout his subsequent writings this author (1929–1930, 1939, 1942) has followed the same