Alan's Arenivaga IDs!

Alan Jeon the GOAT has taken it upon himself to dissect and key out a good portion of our cultured Arenivaga species, and while several tentative IDs we had were confirmed, some were corrected instead, and some have been shown to likely be undescribed!

Here's a list of the species he dissected, labeled first as what we have been calling them in the hobby, with their correct ID following:

• Arenivaga cf. apacha "Cave Creek Canyon" = Arenivaga apacha
• Arenivaga sp. "DOT Rest Area, Amado - Dark" = Arenivaga apacha
• Arenivaga sp. "Miller Canyon" = Arenivaga apacha
• Arenivaga sp. "The Thing" = Arenivaga apacha
• Arenivaga tonkawa "Ft. Davis" = Arenivaga erratica
• Arenivaga sp. "Animas" = Arenivaga erratica
• Arenivaga sp. "Lakeside" = Arenivaga estelleae
• Arenivaga cf. genitalis "Butcher Jones Recreation Area" = Arenivaga genitalis
• Arenivaga sp. "Sahuarita - Small/Dark" = Arenivaga genitalis
• Arenivaga cf. hopkinsorum "Pena Blanca" = Arenivaga hopkinsorum
• Arenivaga cf. tenax "Soccoro" = Arenivaga tenax
• Arenivaga cf. erratica "DOT Rest Area, Amado" = Arenivaga tonkawa
• Arenivaga cf. erratica "Sahuarita - Light" = Arenivaga tonkawa
• Arenivaga cf. tonkawa "Ector County" = Arenivaga tonkawa
• Arenivaga sp. "Hesperia" = Likely Undescribed
• Arenivaga sp. "Madera" = Likely Undescribed
• Arenivaga sp. "Mescalero Dunes" = Likely Undescribed

What a revelation! So far it's looking like we have no shortage of apacha and tonkawa localities, evidently those two are some of the most widespread (or at least easy to find) Arenivaga! 😄

One important thing to note is that there is a high potential for there to be cryptic, undescribed species in this genus that key out as one species or another currently, but may get split based on other morphological and/or genetic features in the future. So some of these IDs may change again over the years, and you may see some of those "apacha" and "tonkawa" populations split into several species in the future.

It's also neat that we got some almost certainly undescribed species in culture, hopefully descriptions will follow eventually and we can put names to those as well!

In any case, huge thanks to Alan for going through and identifying these all, now we finally have a better idea of what's what with our hobby Arenivaga! 😁