NOMOCLASTIDAE ROEWER, 1943 RANK

Kury, Adriano B. & M., Osvaldo Villarreal, 2015, The prickly blade mapped: establishing homologies and a chaetotaxy for macrosetae of penis ventral plate in Gonyleptoidea (Arachnida, Opiliones, Laniatores), Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society (Zool. J. Linn. Soc.) 174 (1), pp. 1-46 : 35

FAMILY NOMOCLASTIDAE ROEWER, 1943 RANK NOV.

Gonyleptidae Nomoclastinae Roewer 1943: 14.

Diagnosis: Outline of dorsal scutum beta or zeta. Coxa IV dorso-apically unarmed. Ventral plate short, as long as truncus width. Latero-distal borders of VP without flange. Macrosetae B lacking. Macrosetae E small, inserted ventrally, forming distal rectangle. Paired laterodistal patches of scale-bristles (type 4) absent. Glans penis without dorsal process. Stylus very short atop a triangular glans.

Combined distribution: Colombia, Ecuador and Panama.

Remarks: Male genitalia of Nomoclastes were studied in detail for the first time for this project and we found that (1) the basic structure strikingly resembles those of Quindina and Zygobunus and (2) there is no compelling evidence to include Nomoclastinae as Manaosbiidae or Stygnidae . That motivated a cladistic analysis. The Zygobunus -like manaosbiids were already informally recognized by some researchers as departing from the typical manaosbiid facies as established in Kury (1997a) while Nomoclastes looks awkward inside Stygnidae . Quindina is still officially in Cranaidae as of 2003 ( Kury, 2003a). Giribet et al. (2010) recognized a more restricted Gonyleptoidea , excluding the Assamiidae and Stygnopsidae , Manaosbiidae appeared as polyphyletic, the classic Rhopalocranaus appeared as a sister group to all the remaining families, while Zygopachylus grouped with Cosmetidae . In Sharma & Giribet (2011) the internal relationships of Gonyleptoidea were radically different from previous studies, and they did not include any typical Manaosbiidae , only Zygopachylus , which appeared in a wide polytomy including also Cosmetidae , Cranaidae and Gonyleptidae . None of these analyses included Nomoclastes .