New Therea species could be coming to US hobby

It is a color form of T. petiveriana and its offspring can look normal. Just like yellow lurida and black hissers, an unusual color form within a colony does not become a new species. I did not think anyone would be confused by the name still petiveriana.

If you look at the CSF photo link posted earlier from a specimen holding you will see T. petiveriana have black underwings so you're placing a lot of stock in the wrong feature.

I think Peter would be happy to see you named a roach after him.
Yellow lurida show up frequently in cultures though. Same goes for black hissers. If this is indeed a color morph, it is an incredibly rare one at that.

I think Peter would be happy to see you named a roach after him.
Smartass... ;)

 
It is a color form of T. petiveriana and its offspring can look normal. I did not think anyone would be confused.

If you look at the photo link posted earlier from a specimen holding you will see T. petiveriana have black underwings so you're placing a lot of stock in the wrong feature.

I think Peter would be happy to see you named a roach after him.
Those underwings look a little more brown than black, but maybe that's just me.

These wings look black: http://www.schaben-spinnen.de/Data/Articles/025.JPG

 
Yellow lurida show up frequently in cultures though. Same goes for black hissers. If this is indeed a color morph, it is an incredibly rare one at that.

Smartass... ;)
It is not rare at all. I cropped another two out of that photo and I've seen maybe 50. I've been selecting for it.

Some people may say I am both words but it is important you keep the language PG. I'm guessing you know now you were spelling the name wrong.

 
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1. Dead specimens fade with age. 2. If you could make a new species out of a shade difference in the rear wings you'd have like 50 Arenivaga from the southwest (ha ha).
Ah, yes I forgot about that, sorry. Well then, is there any difference between T.petiveriana and T.bernhardti at all?

 
Ah, yes I forgot about that, sorry. Well then, is there any difference between T.petiveriana and T.bernhardti at all?
Based on the description of the species, it appears that wing shade is the only difference between species. Perhaps they are all the same species, and wing color is the equivalent of hair color in humans, and should not have been enough to warrant itself a different species in the first place. A genital dissection would be more reliable in determining if it should be classified as its own species. For being a science, taxonomy is highly subject to opinion.

 
Based on the description of the species, it appears that wing shade is the only difference between species. Perhaps they are all the same species, and wing color is the equivalent of hair color in humans, and should not have been enough to warrant itself a different species in the first place. A genital dissection would be more reliable in determining if it should be classified as its own species. For being a science, taxonomy is highly subject to opinion.
Yeah, this all seems fishy, I think there may not even be a T.Bernhardti. Guess we all have T.petiveriana then. And on top of everything, it looks like we are not gaining a new Therea species. Bummer. :(

 
Just as a heads up to you all, I've been doing some following up with whoever had mentioned it to me and they don't really even know where they heard it from. So either someone is holding the species extremely close to the vest to try to not let anyone know, or it's some random rumor someone made up that just started making the rounds. All things considered (especially since the people that told me aren't huge roach people but love Therea), I'd be willing to bet a whole lot of roaches it's the second.

Also Orin I have a male T. petiveriana that looks very much like yours. Lots and lots of white and not many spots. I'll try to get a pic posted later.

 
Seems that there's a bit of confusion about the T. bernhardti and T. petiveriana so here's the description of the species.

http://freeforumzone...px?idd=10038747

According to the key, T. bernhardti has short "black" hind wings, and if I remember correctly I've seen a comment on facebook stating that petiveriana has yellow hind wings that are significantly longer than bernhardti.

What WE HAVE in culture is T. bernhardti if the key is truly valid. The Therea sp. that Jorg had was believed to be true petiveriana, but apparently his culture died out before the ID was determined

 
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Seems that there's a bit of confusion about the T. bernhardti and T. petiveriana so here's the description of the species.

http://freeforumzone...px?idd=10038747

According to the key, T. bernhardti has short "black" hind wings, and if I remember correctly I've seen a comment on facebook stating that petiveriana has yellow hind wings that are significantly longer than bernhardti.

What WE HAVE in culture is T. bernhardti if the key is truly valid. The Therea sp. that Jorg had was believed to be true petiveriana, but apparently his culture died out before the ID was determined
Yeah, I put a link to the description in an earlier post. :P Did you see Orin's post where he left a link to a supposed T.petiveriana from a museum that had black underwings?

 
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Yeah, I put a link to the description in an earlier post. :P Did you see Orin's post where he left a link to a supposed T.petiveriana from a museum that had black underwings?
Ah...I didn't see that. Chances are the species was IDed before the bernhardti was described, which would explain for the black wings.

 
What WE HAVE in culture is T. bernhardti if the key is truly valid.
There is no key and that description does not describe differences from T. petiveriana as is common for a normal new species description. It will be interesting to see how or if this problem is ever addressed.
 
Hi guys,

I have both strains from Jorg in culture. An important thing to know is that both black AND yellow underwings were obviously mixed in his roaches. So, or both are from the same species, and it's just an inner species variation, or they can hybridize and in that case, botch of my colonies are just bullshit. By security, I've kept all black hindwings adults in a tank, and all yellow hindwings in an other one. I'm waiting for their babies to get adult so I'll know it has a chance to be two different species or not.

Originally, all those Therea were sold as Therea petiveriana. The strain was obviously ID by Fabian Deck in Belgium who compared them with other Therea in a museum. I personnaly know him, and last time I saw him we discussed about the possibility it was not petiveriana. Indeed, this species was the more close to what we have in captivity, but he didn't made any wings comparison or anything, he was very quick to ID them and confess he might be wrong, but there were no other Therea in stock that looked like this.

I had a very quick talk with Ingo Fritzsche (who described Therea bernhardti) when I met him last year and he clearly told me the other species, with yellow underwings, was maybe from the same species. No one knows at the moment, but we shouldn't be too enthusiastic about this "new species". If my colony occur to be 100% yellow hindwing, I'll send him some samples so he can confirm me if it's new or not.

Note: what we have in culture is Therea bernhardti, not petiveriana. True petiveriana has hindwings longer than berhardti. When the ID mistake was spotted, Ingo described the new species but the wrong name was already very popular in the hobby. The two strains, yellow and black hindwings, are very short winged. In both case, they are definitely not Therea petiveriana ;)

Best regards,

Nicolas

 
Note: what we have in culture is Therea bernhardti, not petiveriana. True petiveriana has hindwings longer than berhardti.
However, the new description includes two different sized wings and wing length is something that varies within many species and is notoriously a poor indicator. If there is not a definitive specific feature a new description is invalid.
 
It's tempting to put their DNA on one of the sequencers here :)  (I'm working as labspecialist and bioinformatician in a human genetics lab)... 

 
It's tempting to put their DNA on one of the sequencers here :)  (I'm working as labspecialist and bioinformatician in a human genetics lab)... 
That'd be great, keep us updated on that, would probably clear things up a bit as to the whole bernhardti/petiveriana debate!! :)

 
A few news:
I visited the Paris Museum's collection and compared T. petiveriana (from the museum) to my T. berhardti. Sizes are VERY different, no exception. T. petiveriana is way smaller than what we keep!
Just how much smaller? What sex was it? Is it possible that T.petiveriana was just a runt?

 
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