a review of the genus raveniola (araneae, nemesiidae) in china, with notes on allied genera and description of four new species from yunnan

Abstract

The Chinese representatives of Raveniola Zonstein, 1987 are currently recognized to comprise seven species. Four new species – R. montana sp. n. (♂♀), R. shangrila sp. n. (♂), R. songi sp. n. (♂) and R. yunnanensis sp. n. (♂) – are described from the highlands of Yunnan Province, China. According to some characters (shape of the palpus, palpal tibia and tibia I in males) they can be placed together with R. hebeinica Zhu, Zhang & Zhang, 1999 and with R. guangxi (Raven & Schwendinger, 1995) comb. n., transferred here from Sinopesa Raven & Schwendinger, 1995. The current generic position of R. xizangensis (Hu & Li, 1987) is confirmed. Other Chinese nemesiids referred previously to Raveniola are transferred to Sinopesa: S. chinensis (Kulczyński, 1901) comb. n., S. sinensis (Zhu & Mao, 1983) comb. n. and S. chengbuensis (Xu & Yun, 2002) comb. n. The relationships between these Asian genera and their relations to Afrotropical nemesiids are discussed.