African art: female abdomens of East African pholcid spiders (from: Huber 2003b)
In recent quantitative collecting efforts in the East African Uzungwa Mountain forests by a group of Danish, Tanzanian, and US-American zoologists, pholcids were the most abundant spider family, including the first and second most abundant species in the area sampled. In this paper, I treat the six-eyed pholcids from these collections, with the result that all species collected are new to science.
Historically, the study of East African pholcids follows a widespread pattern in invertebrate taxonomy. Since 1936, no single new species had been described from the area, nor was any publication on new records known to me. The present paper aims at narrowing this wide gap between neglect on one side and abundance and diversity on the other side.