We wish to thank Jean-Philippe Taberlet, Nages et Solorgues, France for allowing us to use one of his images of Synema globosum. We also wish to thank Brent Charles Emerson for providing a revision of the languague style. Daniel Suárez was funded by the ‘Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación’through an FPI PhD fellowship (PRE2018-083230).This work was supported by projects CGL2017-85718-P (funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, Spain and EDRF, EU), PID2020-116788GB-I00 (funded by MCIN/ AEI/10.13039/501100011033, Spain), and ProID2021010093 (funded by the Canary Islands Government, Spain and EDRF, EU) awarded to Brent Charles Emerson.Fieldwork was supported by the collecting permits 246285,N°5059 (23/10/2020),A/EST-001/2020, and AFF 193/21 kindly provided by the Canary Islands Government, Cabildo de La Gomera, Cabildo de La Palma and Cabildo de Tenerife, respectively.

The thomisid spider Synema globosum (Fabricius, 1775) is widely distributed in the Palaearctic realm and is particularly common in southern parts of zones with a temperate climate. Seven subspecies have been described; the widely distributed nominotypical subspecies, S. g. globosum and six with much more restricted ranges. As of now, just two subspecies are still recognised as valid while the others have been synonymized with the nominate subspecies. This study now revalidates S. g. canariense Dahl, 1907 (subsp. reval.) based on findings from molecular and comparative morphological analysis. We also argue that the synonymization of the subspecies S. g. daghestanicum Utochkin, 1960 and the species S. japonicum Karsch, 1879 with S. globosum in Ono (1988) is formally correct, but needs further investigation with modern methods.

Peer reviewed