Palpimaninae

Zonstein, Sergei & Marusik, Yuri M., 2022, Redescription of the poorly known genus Ikuma Lawrence, with synonymy and description of a new species from Namibia (Araneae, Palpimanidae), African Invertebrates 63 (2), pp. 105-119 : 105

Subfamily Palpimaninae

Notes.

This subfamily differs from the Otiothopinae by possessing accessory terminal sclerites in the male bulb (which are absent in the males belonging to the latter subfamily; see Platnick 1975). The Palpimaninae can be distinguished from the Chediminae in having eight eyes with widely spaced ALE and PLE vs. two, six or eight eyes with contiguous or lacking ALE and PLE in the chedimine spiders ( Zonstein and Marusik 2017). The subfamily is distributed in the Old World, where its range is limited to the Mediterranean, Sahara-Sind region (including Middle East, Gujarat and Central Asia), and the mainland Sub-Saharan Africa. The record of Palpimanus argentinus Mello-Leitão, 1927 in South America, based only on the types, has not been confirmed by later field studies, and may refer either to a sole introduced species ( Platnick 1975) or, even more likely, to the incorrectly interpreted collection data ( Zonstein and Marusik 2017). The Palpimaninae are divided between two sharply uneven groups of the genus rank: a species-rich Palpimanus Dufour, 1820, with 38 named species distributed throughout the entire subfamily range (WSC 2022), and a small Namibian genus Ikuma Lawrence, 1938, embracing only two species.