Chaetopelma altugkadirorum

Chaetopelma altugkadirorum is a small Old World tarantula that lives in the Eastern Mediterranean, in the border area between Turkey and Syria. It was described as a new species in 2012 by the British arachnologists Richard C. Gallon, Ray Gabriel and Guy Tansley, and its description brought the number of species in the genus Chaetopelma to eight. It closely resembles Chaetopelma olivaceum, a widespread species of the same region. It has been found living in burrows up to 50 centimetres deep in light pine forest in the Yayladagi district of Hatay Province in Turkey and at Ras al-Bassit in Syria, where the burrows were often dug along the decaying root system of rotten pine stumps. The species name is a patronym honouring the Turkish arachnologists Altug Kiziltug and Kadir Bogac Kunt, whose efforts were instrumental in securing specimens for the description.