![]() * That said, I recently noticed that I was getting regular visitors from a particular site, and when I clicked on the tracker link I discovered that I had been added to the blogroll of a collection of gay erotica. Sure, a fair proportion of those people probably came here as a result of a Google search for "amazing pictures of women's organisms", and won't necessarily hang around for long*, but still. That's a lot more than I could easily cater for, even if I was just making muffins. True, that's a mere droplet compared to what some sites get, but then I think about it: two hundred people a day at least look at what I've written. According to the trackers, this site gets a bit over 200 visitors a day. There have been times when I wondered if anyone ever did read this bollocks, or if I was just muttering into the digital void. ![]() But I persevered, and that mediocrity has become a proud tradition. On the 27th of May 2007, I made my very first post on Catalogue of Organisms. Nevertheless, this would strengthen Griswold's (1990) earlier inference that the modified metatarsus I was part of the ancestral morphology of the Phyxelididae, and its absence in certain Vidoleini a secondary loss. However, rather than dividing the African phyxelidids between the Vidoleini and Phyxelidini, Griswold et al.'s (2012) analysis placed the Vidoleini as a monophyletic subgroup of a paraphyletic Phyxelidini. ![]() (2012) agreed with the morphological analysis of Griswold (1990) in separating Vytfutia from the rest of the Phyxelididae (the molecular analysis also failed to confirm monophyly of Phyxelididae including Vytfutia, but its coverage was perhaps not adequate to make this a reliable result). The southeast Asian Vytfutia, placed by Griswold (1990) as the sister taxon to the other phyxelidids, differs in being found in a lower altitude in primary rainforest. For the most part, the family exhibits what is known as an 'afromontane' distribution: though found in most altitudes in the southernmost part of Africa, tropical African members of the family are restricted to alpine localities or caves. Phyxelididae produce tangled or sheet webs from cribellate silk, which they generally place in secluded locations such as under rocks or logs (a few tropical African species are found in caves). Web of Ambohima sublima photographed by Joel Ledford, from Griswold et al. In the tribe Videoleini, there is no spur but there may still be a spinose apophysis (Griswold 1990). In Vytfutia and members of the tribe Phyxelidini, a large articulate spur atop an apophysis on the metatarsus sits against a spinose depression. Another significant feature is the presence in most species of modified first (and sometimes second) metatarsi in the males, used for grasping the female during mating (Griswold et al. These are expected to function as a stridulatory apparatus this has not yet been robustly confirmed, though individuals have been observed making jerking movements of the palp prior to copulation that may suggest stridulation (Griswold et al. Distinguishing features of the family include a series of thickened setae on the inner side of the pedipalp femur in both sexes. A single species, Phyxelida anatolica, is found in Cyprus and southeast Turkey, and the genus Vytfutia includes two species found in Sumatra and Borneo. They are a family of smallish spiders found mostly in eastern Africa (including Madagascar). The Phyxelididae, the lace web weavers, are one of the families of spiders to have appeared on the scene in recent years as a result of the collapse of the 'amaurobioids'. Male of the Madagascan Ambohima sublima, with enlarged inset of the clasping apparatus of metatarsus I, from Griswold et al.
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