Palpigrades of the World

Palpigrades of the World has been designed to provide some taxonomic information on palpigrades and a comprehensive list of the scientific literature.

A tiny plapigrade walking over soil, macro shot

What are Palpigrades?

Palpigrades are extremely small arachnids with leg-like pedipalps, a pair of three-segmented chelicerae, and an ovate abdomen with a long terminal flagellum.

There relationships are difficult to assess but their affinities may lie with the Pedipalpi (Schizomida + Amblypygi + Uropygi).

Palpigrades occur in many different climate from tropical and sub-tropical rainforests to subterranean habitats in central Europe and arid Australia.

 

Phylogeny

Unfortunately, there have been no detailed phylogenetic analyses of palpigrades.

 

Fossil Fauna

There are very few palpigrade fossils. Paleokoenenia mordax from mid-Tertiary deposits in Arizona is the sole described species (Rowland and Sissom, 1980). For many years Sternarthron was thought to represent a palpigrade but it is now known to be a member of the insect order Polyneoptera (Delclòs et al., 2008).

 

This website contains published data up to the end of 2011.

 

 


Important references

  • Condé, B. (1996) Les Palpigrades, 1885-1995: acquisitions et lacunes. Revue Suisse de Zoologie, hors série 1: 87-106.
  • Harvey, M.S. (2003). Catalogue of the smaller arachnid orders of the world: Amblypygi, Uropygi, Schizomida, Palpigradi, Ricinulei and Solifugae. CSIRO Publishing: Melbourne.

 

 

This website should be cited as:

Harvey, M.S. (2013). Palpigrades of the World, version 1.0. Western Australian Museum, Perth. http://www.museum.wa.gov.au/catalogues/palpigrades