Conothele Thorell, 1878

Liu, Hao, Xu, Xin, Zhang, Zengtao, Liu, Fengxing & Li, Daiqin, 2019, Four new species of the trapdoor spider genus Conothele Thorell, 1878 (Araneae, Halonoproctidae) from China, ZooKeys 833, pp. 133-150 : 133

Genus Conothele Thorell, 1878

Type.

Conothele malayana ( Doleschall 1859): 5, pl. 5, fig. 8 (described female).

Diagnosis.

The genus Conothele can be distinguished from all other Halonoproctidae genera other than Ummidia by the presence of a saddle depression on tibia III ( Coyle 1981; Ortiz 2007; Decae 2010). Conothele differs from Ummidia by their burrowing habits. The former constructs a short, parallel to the surface of ground, superficial burrow, whereas the latter digs a several centimeters long burrow in the soil ( Haupt 2006). Moreover, the geographical ranges of Ummidia and Conothele are completely separated, with Conothele being distributed in the Orient and Australasian regions, and with Ummidia being distributed in the New World and Mediterranean regions ( Xu et al. 2017a; Godwin et al. 2018; Yang and Xu 2018; World Spider Catalog 2019).