NEW SPECIES OF PALPIMANIDAE (ARANEAE) 
FROM THE WEST INDIES* 
By Arthur M. Chickering 
Museum of Comparative Zoology 
Members of the family Palpimanidae have been reported from 
many parts of the world but the number of genera and species 
remains small as compared to many other families of spiders. Five 
genera have long been recognized from the Western Hemisphere, as 
follows: Anisaedus Simon, 1893; Compsopus Tullgren, 1905; 
Theringia Keyserling, 1891; Otiothops Macleay, 1839; and Palpi- 
manus Dufour, 1820. Species assigned to the genus Otiothops far 
outnumber the species belonging to the remaining four genera, taken 
in the Western Hemisphere, whereas species belonging to the genus 
Palpimanus have been described far more frequently than in any 
other genus in the Eastern Hemisphere. 
Apparently, only one species of Anisaedus has heretofore been de- 
scribed from the Western Hemisphere and that was collected in 
Ecuador. As far as I have been able to learn, up to the present time 
twelve species of Otiothops have been described from South America, 
Central America and the West Indies. Both sexes are now known 
for O. brevis Simon from Venezuela, O. macleayi Banks from 
Panama, O. walckenaeri MacLeay from Cuba. O. calcaratus Mello- 
Leitao from Colombia is known only from the male. The eight 
remaining species are known only from females. 
Ever since finding both sexes of O. macleayi Banks in Panama in 
1934 and 1936 I have been interested in the family. I have taken 
this species in large numbers in many different localities in Panama. 
I have not yet found species belonging to the genus Otiothops in 
Jamaica, W. I. where I have spent considerable time on collecting 
trips in the last decade. The genus did not appear in my recent 
collection from Puerto Rico where I had hoped to find the male of 
O. lutzi Petrunkevitch. I have two immature specimens taken in the 
spring of 1964 on St. John, U. S. Virgin Islands which I am tenta- 
tively assigning to O. lutzi. In my collection made on the island of 
Trinidad, W. I., in the spring of 1964 I found a very interesting 
male and several females of a species which I am assigning to Otio- 
thops even though the male palp shows features not heretofore 
associated with this genus. This species is described later in this 
brief paper. While searching through the collection of palpimanid 
* Manuscript received by the editor March 6, 1966. 
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