Chileotaxus Explained

Chileotaxus is a monotypic genus of Chilean araneomorph spiders in the family Physoglenidae, containing the single species Chileotaxus sans. It was first described by Norman I. Platnick in 1990,^[1] and is found in Chile.^[2] Originally placed with the Synotaxidae, it was moved to the Physoglenidae in 1973.^[3] The generic name is a contraction of "Chilean Synotaxus", and the specific name is an arbitrary combination of letters.

Description

Chileotaxus sans is a green spider with long, spineless legs^[4] and a triangular abdomen. Adults range from 1.9 to 2.3 mm in length. The carapace is longer than it is wide, and narrows towards the anterior end.

The eyes cover almost the entire width of the head region. The MOQ forms a trapezium which is wider towards the rear, and with the AME closer together than the PME. The AME are darker and smaller than the other eyes, and the clypeal height is approximately four times the diameter of the AME.

Habitat and description

The species is found in wet forests in Chile, under the leaves of trees and shrubs. They construct a dome shaped sheet-web, with the apex underneath a leaf.

See also

• List of Physoglenidae species
• Glossary of spider terms

Notes and References

1. Forster . R. R. . Raymond Robert Forster . Platnick . N. I. . Norman I. Platnick . Coddington . J. . Jonathan A. Coddington . 1990 . A proposal and review of the spider family Synotaxidae (Araneae, Araneoidea), with notes on theridiid interrelationships . Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History . 193 . 94–95.
2. Gloor . Daniel . Nentwig . Wolfgang . Blick . Theo . Kropf . Christian . 2019 . Gen. Chileotaxus Platnick, 1990 . Natural History Museum Bern . 10.24436/2 . World Spider Catalog Version 20.0 . 2019-10-13.
3. Dimitrov . D. . etal . 2017 . Rounding up the usual suspects: a standard target-gene approach for resolving the interfamilial phylogenetic relationships of ecribellate orb-weaving spiders with a new family-rank classification (Araneae, Araneoidea) . Cladistics . 33 . 3 . 242 . 10.1111/cla.12165 . free. 34715728 .
4. Book: Platnick, Norman . Spiders of the World: A Natural History . Ivy Press, an imprint of The Quarto Group . 2020 . 9781782407508 . London . 149 . English . Norman I. Platnick.