Two new species of the genus Nemaspela Šilhavý from caves in Georgia (Opiliones Nemastomatidae)
Author
Martens, Jochen
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Institut für Organismische und Molekulare Evolutionsbiologie (iomE), D- 55099 Mainz, Germany; Senckenberg Research Institute, Arachnology, D- 60325 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Author
Maghradze, Eter
Institute of Zoology, Ilia State University, Giorgi Tsereteli 3, 0162, Tbilisi, Georgia
Author
Barjadze, Shalva
Institute of Zoology, Ilia State University, Giorgi Tsereteli 3, 0162, Tbilisi, Georgia
text
Zootaxa
2021
2021-04-07
4951
3
541
558
journal article
7383
10.11646/zootaxa.4951.3.7
a6ee038f-4cda-4f38-8fde-8ad0efec8f0f
1175-5326
4668453
EB876346-4282-4B4E-8585-ED50F1A616E4
Nemastomatidae
in the Holarctic
This opilionid family of predominantly small species shows a holarctic distribution. The nominate subfamily,
Nemastomatinae Simon, 1879
has its strongholds in the West Palearctic with a distributional focus in central and southern Europe,
Turkey
and the Caucasus (
Schönhofer 2013
); a few recently discovered outliers extend the area to Central Asia and western
China
(
Snegovaya 2010
;
Martens 2016
,
2017
;
Zhang & Martens 2018
). The subfamily comprises about 120 species (
Schönhofer 2013
;
Martens 2016
). The second subfamily,
Ortholasmatinae
Shear & Gruber, 1983
(
Shear & Gruber 1983
;
Shear 2006
,
2010
) is distributed in
East Asia
including
Japan
(
Martens 2019
;
Schwendinger & Gruber 1992
), and the west coast of North America. Its area extends southward to Central America, the Mexican highlands and the Honduran tropics (
Shear 2010
;
Cruz-Lopéz
et al.
2018
). This subfamily is much poorer in genera and species than
Nemastomatinae
; seven genera of the former are described and 18 of the latter. The majority of
Ortholasmatinae
species occur in western North America and in Central America (
Martens 2019
).