The spider collection (Arachnida: Araneae) of the Zoological Museum of the Iranian Research Institute of Plant Protection, with new species records for Iran

The department of Agricultural Zoology at the Iranian Research Institute of Plant Protection houses a museum with collections of different groups of animals, mainly ticks, mites, birds and rodents, but also a small collection of spiders. Specimens were mainly collected by Dr. Fariba Mozaffarian – now curator of Auchenorrhyncha, Insect Taxonomy Research Department – and Ms. Sahra Ghavami. Some of these specimens were previously reported as definite or probable misidentifications, e.g. Dresserus, Eresidae, known from Africa only, here identified as Stegodyphus pacificus and Pardosa monticola, Lycosidae, here identified as P. buchari, as suggested by Marusik et al. (2012). Furthermore, a considerable portion of the collection has never been cited before. Thus a comprehensive study on the identification of these specimens was carried out. As a result, new interesting data on numerous taxa that are new to the fauna of the country were recovered and are reported and illustrated here.