Anopsicus Chamberlin & Ivie, 1938

Huber, Bernhard A. & Villarreal, Osvaldo, 2020, On Venezuelan pholcid spiders (Araneae, Pholcidae), European Journal of Taxonomy 718, pp. 1-317 : 6-7

Anopsicus Chamberlin & Ivie, 1938

Notes

With now 64 described species (all but the new species below in Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies), Anopsicus is among the most species-rich pholcid genera. The majority of species has a total body length of less than 2 mm, and 23 species are known from only one sex. Fortunately, Gertsch’s (1982) revision of the genus treats most known species (all except A. tico Huber, 1998 ), and his illustrations, even though offering little detail, provide enough information to confidently distinguish most species.

A comparison of the Venezuelan specimens below with Gertsch’s descriptions and drawings reveals that some named species appear to be similar in structure [e.g., procursus of A. mitchelli (Gertsch, 1971) ; genital bulb of A. silvanus Gertsch, 1982 ], but none is as small as the species below ( A. chiapa Gertsch, 1982 is the smallest, with a body length of 1.12 and carapace width of 0.57). In addition, Gertsch (1982) emphasized the high degree of endemism in this genus (“…one of the prime identification aids for the species of Anopsicus is geography…”). In fact, his identification keys are divided by geographic regions ( Mexico, Central America, West Indies) because there was no overlap. The putatively new species below is the first to be described from South America, so it appears very unlikely also from this perspective that it could be a synonym of a Central American or West Indian (only Cuba and Jamaica) species.

The assignment of the species below to Anopsicus appears straightforward by Gertsch’s (1982) criteria and by similarity, but it should be noted that the monophyly of Anopsicus has never been tested by rigorous analysis. In our recent molecular phylogeny ( Eberle et al. 2018; Huber et al. 2018), the few species of Anopsicus included were scattered among representatives of Modisimus Simon, 1893 .

It remains unclear whether those species were erroneously assigned to Anopsicus or if Anopsicus is nonmonophyletic.