''Scotospilus westlandicus'' is a species of

Hahniidae Dwarf sheet spiders (Hahniidae) is a family of araneomorph spiders, first described by Philipp Bertkau in 1878. Description Their bodies are about long, and they build extremely delicate webs in the form of a sheet that does not lead to a retr ...

spider endemic to

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

.Forster, R. R. (1970)
The spiders of New Zealand. Part III
''Otago Museum Bulletin'' 3: 1-184

Taxonomy

This species was described as ''Tuana westlandica'' by

Ray Forster Raymond Robert Forster (19 June 1922 – 1 July 2000) was a New Zealand Arachnology, 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, a ...

in 1970 from a female specimen. In 1986, ''Tuana'' was recognized as a synonym of '' Scotospilus'', so the species name was changed to ''Scotospilus westlandicus''. The holotype is stored in

Otago Museum Otago (, ; ) is a region of New Zealand located in the southern half of the South Island and administered by the Otago Regional Council. It has an area of approximately , making it the country's second largest local government region. Its po ...

Description

The female is recorded at 1.87mm in length. It is coloured similarly to '' Scotospilus plenus''.

Distribution

This species is only known from Westland, 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 s ...

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

References

Hahniidae Endemic spiders of New Zealand Spiders described in 1970 {{Araneomorphae-stub