The pholcid spiders of Sri Lanka (Araneae: Pholcidae)
Author
Huber, Bernhard A.
text
Zootaxa
2019
2019-01-23
4550
1
1
57
journal article
27502
10.11646/zootaxa.4550.1.1
291701d4-652e-440e-adab-f6b0201c0972
1175-5326
2625030
2F7D1EC4-D4ED-4FAE-B227-CF7B79EAE833
Tissahamia
Huber, 2018
Pholcus ethagala
group:
Huber 2011
: 171
.
Huber
et al.
2016a
: 4
.
Tissahamia
Huber,
2018
in
Huber
et al.
2018
: 86
.
Type
species:
Pholcus ethagala
Huber, 2011
(
Sri Lanka
).
Notes
. The genus
Tissahamia
was recently created for eleven species from
Sri Lanka
and Southeast Asia, all of which had originally been described in
Pholcus
(
Huber
et al.
2018
)
. The genus consists of two sub-groups: a Sri Lankan group and a Southeast Asian group. Several morphological similarities join the two groups (
Huber 2011
), but ecologically they differ dramatically: all Sri Lankan representatives are leaf-dwellers; all Southeast Asian species are litter-dwellers (
Huber
et al.
2016a
). Molecular data were ambiguous as to the monophyly of the genus (
Eberle
et al.
2018
) but both groups were consistently most closely related to two other Southeast Asian genera (
Teranga
Huber, 2018
and
Panjange
Deeleman-Reinhold & Deeleman, 1983
).
The ZMUT has a female specimen from
India
,
Kerala
[Ernakulam Angamaly, Desom,
10.13°N
,
76.35°E
, AA 3636] that reminds of the four Sri Lankan species, suggesting that the Sri Lankan clade of the genus may in fact be a Western Ghats-Sri Lankan endemic group.