Abstract
Two new species of Phyxelididae are described from southern Africa: Xevioso cepfi sp. nov. (♂♀), from mountains in the Niassa Province of northern Mozambique, and X. megcummingae sp. nov. (♂♀), from urban Harare, northern Zimbabwe and the Viphya Mts in Malawi. They represent the northernmost localities of the genus. An identification key, partially adapted for the new species, is presented. The biogeographical importance of the mountain areas on both sides of the northern part of Lake Malawi is discussed.
Highlights
Phyxelididae is a fairly small spider family with 14 genera and only 64 species
Two new species of Phyxelididae are described from southern Africa: Xevioso cepfi sp. nov. (♂♀), from mountains in the Niassa Province of northern Mozambique, and X. megcummingae sp. nov. (♂♀), from urban Harare, northern Zimbabwe and the Viphya Mts in Malawi
Male palps and habitus were photographed with a Leica MZ16 using the Leica Application Suite (LAS) automontage software, with a Z-stack of 15–25 images merged into a single photomontage
Summary
Phyxelididae is a fairly small spider family with 14 genera and only 64 species. It has a peculiar distribution, mainly in southern and eastern Africa and Madagascar, with a few outliers in Turkey and Indonesia. It retained subfamily status in the complete revision by Griswold (1990) but received family status in the study of Griswold et al (2005). One of the largest genera, Xevioso Lehtinen, 1967, currently contains nine nominal species (Griswold 1990).
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