Niarchos cotopaxi, Platnick & Duperre, 2010

Platnick, Norman I. & Dupérré, Nadine, 2010, The Andean Goblin Spiders Of The New Genera Niarchos And Scaphios (Araneae, Oonopidae), Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2010 (345), pp. 1-120 : 10

The cotopaxi Group

Males of this group can easily be recognized by the presence of a retroventral projection on the palpal bulb (figs. 15–17); females resemble those of the scutatus group in having the postepigastric scutum so short that it does not fully reach the posterior spiracles and the groove connecting them (figs. 25–27). The known males clearly fall into three subgroups. The two species from Colombia uniquely share a distal bend on the retroventral palpal bulb projection (figs. 202, 225). The two most southern species (from Azuay province, Ecuador) uniquely share a greatly narrowed and ventrally directed anterior projection on the male endites (figs. 151, 174). The remaining Ecuadorean males uniquely share anterior endite projections shaped like the bill of a duck (figs. 12, 49). The group appears to be restricted to the western slopes of the Andes of Ecuador and southern Colombia.