Anapidae is a family of rather small spiders with 233 described extant species in 59 genera.[1] It includes the former family Micropholcommatidae as the subfamily Micropholcommatinae,[2] and the former family Holarchaeidae. Most species are less than 2 millimetres (0.079 in) long.[3]
They generally live in leaf litter and moss on the floor of rain forest. Many build orb webs with a diameter less than 3 centimetres (1.2 in). In some species, such as Pseudanapis parocula, the pedipalps of the female are reduced to coxal stumps.[3]
Description
Spiders of this family are very small, usually less than two millimeters long, and lack a cribellum. They can have zero, six or eight eyes, the rear median eyes either reduced or missing. One species: 'Epigastrina typhlops'[4] (Rix & Harvey, 2010) [5] has no eyes, an adaption to life underground [6]. In some genera the carapace is modified so that the eyes are raised higher than usual. Color can range from reddish brown, yellowish brown to pale, pigment reduced, creams. Generally both margins of chelicerae have teeth, one exception being 'Acrobleps hygrophilus' who lacks retromarginal teeth[7]. The legs are short and spineless, though there are some with reduced spination such as the genus: 'Teutoniella' [8] or with only one or two long spines such as 'Borneanapis' [9]). The labium has a spur that extends between the chelicerae and can be seen when the chelicerae are spread.[10]
Distribution
Anapidae are found worldwide, particularly in South America, Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Few genera occur in North America or Europe. Only Comaroma simoni and the three species of Zangherella are found in Europe; Gertschanapis shantzi and Comaroma mendocino are found in the United States.[11]
Systematics
The family Micropholcommatidae was synonymized with this family by Schütt in 2003[12] and by Lopa et al. in 2011,[13][2] a change that has been accepted by the World Spider Catalog.[11] Similarly, the family Holarchaeidae was synonymized by Dimitrov et al. in 2017, and likewise accepted by the World Spider Catalog.[14]
^ abMurphy, F; Murphy, J. (2000). "An introduction to the spiders of South East Asia with notes on all the genera". Malaysian Nature Society Kuala Lumpur.
^Lopardo, L.; Giribet, G. & Hormiga, G. (2011), "Morphology to the rescue: molecular data and the signal of morphological characters in combined phylogenetic analyses — a case study from mysmenid spiders (Araneae, Mysmenidae), with comments on the evolution of web architecture", Cladistics, 27 (3): 278–330, doi:10.1111/j.1096-0031.2010.00332.x, PMID34875780, S2CID85647657
