Chibchea Huber, 2000

Huber, Bernhard A. & Villarreal, Osvaldo, 2020, On Venezuelan pholcid spiders (Araneae, Pholcidae), European Journal of Taxonomy 718, pp. 1-317 : 38

Chibchea Huber, 2000

Notes

The largely Andean genus Chibchea now includes 21 described species, ranging from Venezuela to Chile, with a few species known from the Amazon basin ( Huber 2000; Huber & Carvalho 2019). The type species is from Colombia, and several species, in particular those from Venezuela and Chile, were originally assigned tentatively to the genus ( Huber 2000).

Preliminary molecular (CO1) data (J.J. Astrin, B.A. Huber, unpublished data) do not place C. thunbergae Huber sp. nov. with the Brazilian C. amapa Huber & Carvalho, 2019 and C. santosi Huber & Carvalho, 2019 , both of which are presumably ‘true’ Chibchea (i.e., with apophyses on the male cheliceral fangs). Thus, C. thunbergae Huber sp. nov. and the other three known Venezuelan representatives of Chibchea may eventually end up in their own genus.

We do not have new data on one of the two previously described species from Venezuela , Chibchea merida Huber, 2000 from Mérida state, known from three localities: “coffee forest” at Univ. Los Andes [approximately 8.591° N, 71.144° W], Quebrada Eusebio [approximately 8.684° N, 71.380° W], and Cueva del Pirata near La Azulita [8.7130° N, 71.4405° W] (the coordinates of the latter locality in Huber 2000 were copied from the label but are wrong, i.e., about 5 km S of the cave).