Scientific heritage of Alexandru Roşca: publications, spider collection, described species

The scientific heritage of the Romanian arachnologist Alexandru Roşca (publications, spider collection, and described species) was surveyed. For almost 40 years Alexandru Roşca studied the spiders from territories that are now parts of Romania, Ukraine, Bulgaria, and Moldova. Despite political repression, Roşca made a significant contribution to the study of the spiders of Romania and bordering countries, reflected in his 19 papers including the Ph.D. thesis. A complete list of Roşca’s papers is presented. The ‘Alexandru Roşca’ spider collection is deposited in the Grigore Antipa National Museum of Natural History (Bucharest, Romania). According to the register it includes 596 species (1526 specimens) of spiders. Part of the collection was revised by different scientists and later by the present authors. During the period 1931–1939, Roşca described 13 spider species. To date, five species names have been synonymised. We propose that six species should be treated as nomina dubia because of their poor descriptions and lack of availability of types and/or other specimens. For two of Roşca’s species, Pardosa roscai (Roewer, 1951) and Tetragnatha reimoseri (Roşca, 1939), data and figures are presented and information on them is updated.