Ceratogyrus bechuanicus

Ceratogyrus darlingi

Ceratogyrus marshalli

Ceratogyrus brachycephalus / sanderi

Ceratogyrus meridionalis

In the below two pictures of C.brachycephalus you can clearly see the difference in the shape of the horn between wild caught and captive bred stock. In the wild caught specimens the horn is very pronounced pointing toward the eyes into a point at the tip. In the captive bred specimen the horn is much more rounded and less pronounced as seen in C.sanderi, that said i have several of the captive specimens where the horn varies from the pictured rounded horn to the more pointed horn present in the W/C specimens. I will touch a little further on this in the next part this page showing the Abdominal band differences.

 

Ceratogyrus brachycephalus W/C

Single abdominal band

single abdominal band

Double abdominal band

Double abdominal band

Single abdominal band

Double abdominal band

If we now look at the three pics below, all captive bred C.brachycephalus and compare to the above middle pic of a wild caught specimen of the same species that clearly displays a single abdominal band, you can straight away see the differences. if we look at the pic bottom left, this was a sub adult captive bred C.brachycephalus acquired in 2004, now adult which clearly displays a double abdominal band unlike the wild caught specimen, more characteristic of C.sanderi, the same was found with the horn shape as noted above.

If we now look at the lower pics, center and right, both of these were acquired as spiderlings from the same batch in 2004, now around 1.5" legspan, yet one clearly displays a single abdominal band, and the other a double abdominal band.

In conclusion, either C.brachycephalus carry both single and double abdominal band genes, or captive bred C.brachycephalus have been X bred with one of the species with a double abdominal band, C.marshalli, C.meridionalis or C.sanderi? looking at the horn comparison in the captive bred specimens, it closer resembles that of C.sanderi. I have searched the www. looking at pics, although i could not find sub abdominal pics, nearly all the pics i looked at displayed the sanderi type horn in both EU & the U.S.