Magana Huber, 2019

Huber, Bernhard A. & Carvalho, Leonardo S., 2019, Filling the gaps: descriptions of unnamed species included in the latest molecular phylogeny of Pholcidae (Araneae), Zootaxa 4546 (1), pp. 1-96 : 39

Magana Huber gen. n.

Type species. Magana velox sp. n.

Etymology. The genus name is derived from Magan, an ancient region which was referred to in Sumerian cuneiform texts and may be part of what is now Oman; gender feminine.

Diagnosis/Description. See diagnosis and description of single known species below.

Notes. The recent molecular phylogeny of Pholcidae ( Eberle et al. 2018) placed this species as sister to Ninetis . Even though the data were fragmentary (only two genes successfully sequenced for Ninetis ) and the support value rather low, this sister group relationship makes sense geographically: Ninetis and Magana are the only known Old World genera in Ninetinae . Nevertheless, the species newly described below is not assigned to Ninetis because all previously described representatives of Ninetis are very uniform morphologically despite their wide geographic range (from Namibia to the Arabian Peninsula), while Magana velox differs in several aspects (see diagnosis below).