Nemastomatidae

Martens, Jochen, Maghradze, Eter & Barjadze, Shalva, 2021, Two new species of the genus Nemaspela Šilhavý from caves in Georgia (Opiliones Nemastomatidae), Zootaxa 4951 (3), pp. 541-558 : 553

Nemastomatidae in the Holarctic

This opilionid family of predominantly small species shows a holarctic distribution. The nominate subfamily, Nemastomatinae Simon, 1879 has its strongholds in the West Palearctic with a distributional focus in central and southern Europe, Turkey and the Caucasus ( Schönhofer 2013); a few recently discovered outliers extend the area to Central Asia and western China ( Snegovaya 2010; Martens 2016, 2017; Zhang & Martens 2018). The subfamily comprises about 120 species ( Schönhofer 2013; Martens 2016). The second subfamily, Ortholasmatinae Shear & Gruber, 1983 ( Shear & Gruber 1983; Shear 2006, 2010) is distributed in East Asia including Japan ( Martens 2019; Schwendinger & Gruber 1992), and the west coast of North America. Its area extends southward to Central America, the Mexican highlands and the Honduran tropics ( Shear 2010; Cruz-Lopéz et al. 2018). This subfamily is much poorer in genera and species than Nemastomatinae ; seven genera of the former are described and 18 of the latter. The majority of Ortholasmatinae species occur in western North America and in Central America ( Martens 2019).