First records of Clubiona hitchinsi Saaristo, 2002 on Ascension Island (Araneae, Clubionidae)

. Clubiona hitchinsi Saaristo, 2002, previously known from the Seychelles and French Polynesia, is newly recorded from Ascension Island, based on comparison of the Ascension specimens against two paratypes. The first detailed figures of the endogyne, based on a paratype, are provided. Characters in this species not found in European species of Clubiona Latreille, 1804 but found in the misplaced hystrix -group in Asia—namely the presence of a spine at the tip of the cymbium, retrolateral tibial apophysis with spine-like tip, and presence of a keel on the teg-ulum in the male, and copulatory ducts running on the posterior side in the genitalia of the female—are discussed.


Introduction
The genus Clubiona Latreille, 1804 currently contains 524 species distributed worldwide (WSC 2023).Of these species, none has been formally recorded from Ascension Island, a remote inhabited island of volcanic origin in the South Atlantic Ocean (Ashmole and Ashmole 2000).Duffey (1964) reported "Clubiona sp.aff.vachoni" from Boatswain Bird Island and "Clubiona spp." from unlocalized areas of the main island but did not provide any illustrations or descriptions.
Recently, one of us (DS) has been sorting Duffey's spider materials, deposited at the Natural History Museum, London (NHMUK), and this included the clubionid materials mentioned by Duffey (1964).Examination of these specimens clearly indicated all of them belonged to a single morphospecies, found both on the main island and Boatswain Bird Island.These materials were then compared against the literature to identify possible related species.Recent materials also sent to DS from the Ascension Island Conservation Directorate invertebrate collection (ASC) contained fresh specimens of this species.Saaristo (2002) described Clubiona hitchinsi Saaristo, 2002 based on both sexes from the Seychelles, also providing another taxonomic account of the species in his posthumous book chapter on Seychellois spiders (Saaristo 2010).We immediately noticed a resemblance between the Ascension Island materials and the illustrations of C. hitchinsi in Saaristo's work.YMM recently had the opportunity to directly examine and photograph type specimens of C. hitchinsi, housed in the Zoological Museum of the University of Turku (MZT), providing definitive evidence that this species is conspecific with the specimens from Ascension.
Thus, in this work, we formally report C. hitchinsi for the first time from Ascension Island, also thereby solving the taxonomic puzzle of Ascension's clubionids nearly six decades after the first report of the family from this island.

Methods
Specimens were examined under a binocular stereomicroscope.Images of specimens from Ascension Island were made using a Canon EOS 6D Mark II attached to a Leica MZ12.5 stereomicroscope, with images stacked using Helicon Focus software.Photographs of paratypes were obtained using an Olympus Came-      figures were made from the same paratype).The combination of the three above character states together differentiates it from the other aforementioned hystrixgroup species.In the female, the epigyne has copulatory ducts (Cd) running on the posterior side (Fig. 5D), and the copulatory openings (Co) are also very small and almost indistinct (Fig. 5A, B).

Discussion
The formal report of C. hitchinsi from Ascension given herein solves a nearly six-decade puzzle, in which the species-level identity of clubionids collected by Eric Duffey was not known with certainty.We also thus confirm yet another invasive species of spider on Ascension Island, with invasive species significantly outnumbering valid endemics  The senior author thanks Vicky Wilkins (Species Recovery Trust and IUCN SSC Mid-Atlantic Islands Invertebrate Specialist Group) for support of her research.We are most grateful to the reviewers Cláudio Júnior, Antonio Brescovit, and Cláudia Xavier for their comments which greatly improved the manuscript.This work was made possible by funding to the senior author through the Darwin Plus grant DPLUS135: "From pseudoscorpions to crickets: securing Ascensions Island's unique invertebrates", funded by the Darwin Plus Initiative, United Kingdom Government, and administered by Ascension Island Government, supported by the Species Recovery Trust.
dia E-520 camera attached to an Olympus SZX16 stereomicroscope in the Zoological Museum, University of Turku.Digital images at different focal planes were stacked with Helicon Focus v. 8.1.1.Photographs of dissected endogynes were made after digesting tissues in a 10% KOH aqueous solution.Abbreviations: ASC = Ascension Island Conservation Directorate collection, Georgetown, Ascension Island (it is intended in the future that the ASC invertebrate collection will be donated and moved to the Saint Helena National Trust, Jamestown, Saint Helena); Bc = bursa copulatrix; Cd = copulatory ducts; Co = copulatory openings; E = embolus; imm.= immature; NHMUK = Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom; RTA = retrolateral tibial apophysis; Sp = spermathecae; Spc = spine at top of cymbium; Ti = spine-like tip of retrolateral tibial apophysis; Tk = tegular keel; WSC = World Spider Catalog; MZT = Zoological Museum, University of Turku, Finland.Maps (except the topographic map of Ascension) were made with SimpleMappr (Shorthouse 2010).

C
. kowongChrysanthus, 1967; C. kuu Jäger & Dankittipakul, 2010; C. maipai Jäger & Dankittipakul, 2010;  C. meraukensis Chrysanthus, 1967; C. papuana Chrysanthus, 1967; C. sertungensisHayashi, 1996; and C.  zhangyongjingi Li & Blick, 2019.All the characters given in the diagnosis may indicate that this species and, indeed, all of those placed in the hystrix group, deserve transferal to a different genus.Given the similarity of the genitalia and the indigenous distribution of this species group being in Asia(Jäger 2012), with records in other areas representing non-native introductions (e.g.Dierkens and Ramage 2016; this work), we consider it likely they all belong to Invexillata Versteirt, Baert & Jocqué, 2010 but more materials should be considered and examined, which is outside the scope of the present work.