Holarchaea

{{Short description|Genus of spiders}}

{{Automatic taxobox

| taxon = Holarchaea

| image = Holarchaea.jpg

| image_caption = Holarchaea species from New Zealand, possibly Holarchaea novaeseelandiae

| authority = Forster, 1955

| type_species = H. novaeseelandiae

| type_species_authority = (Forster, 1949)

| range_map = Distribution.holarchaeidae.1.png

| subdivision_ranks = {{va|Species}}

| subdivision = {{Specieslist

| H. globosa|(Hickman, 1981) – Australia (Tasmania)

| H. novaeseelandiae|(Forster, 1949) – New Zealand}}

}}

Holarchaea is a genus of South Pacific araneomorph spiders in the family Anapidae, and was first described by Raymond Robert Forster in 1955.{{cite journal| last=Forster| first=R. R.| year=1955| title=Spiders of the family Archaeidae from Australia and New Zealand.| journal=Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand| pages=391–403| volume=83}} {{as of|2019|05}} it contains only two species, H. globosa and H. novaeseelandiae, but there may still be undescribed species in New Zealand.

These spiders are shiny black to beige, and grow up to {{convert|1.5|mm}} long.{{cite web| mode=cs1| last=Rix| first=Michael G.| title=Holarchaeid Spiders| publisher=Australian Arachnological Society| url=http://www.australasian-arachnology.org/arachnology/araneae/holarchaeidae/| accessdate=2016-09-23}} They are one of few spider taxa that do not have venom glands.{{cite book| editor-last1=Meier| editor-first1=J.| editor-last2=White| editor-first2=J.| year=1995| title=Handbook of Clinical Toxicology of Animal Venoms and Poisons| publisher=CRC Press}}

They are known only from the forests of Tasmania and New Zealand, where they live in many microhabitats that regularly have high humidity.{{cite journal| title=Gen. Holarchaea Forster, 1955| website=World Spider Catalog Version 20.0| accessdate=2019-06-11| year=2019| publisher=Natural History Museum Bern| url=http://www.wsc.nmbe.ch/genus/1073| doi=10.24436/2| last1=Gloor| first1=Daniel| last2=Nentwig| first2=Wolfgang| last3=Blick| first3=Theo| last4=Kropf| first4=Christian}} Originally placed with the assassin spiders, it was moved to its own family, Holarchaeidae, in 1984,{{cite journal| last=Forster| first=R. R.| last2=Platnick| first2=N. I.| year=1984| title=A review of the archaeid spiders and their relatives, with notes on the limits of the superfamily Palpimanoidea (Arachnida, Araneae)| journal=Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History| volume=178| page=71| url=http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/dspace/bitstream/2246/991/1/B178a01.pdf| author-link=Raymond_Robert_Forster| author-link2=Norman_I._Platnick}} and Holarchaeidae was synonymized with Anapidae in 2017.{{cite journal| last=Dimitrov| first=D.| display-authors=etal| year=2017| title=Rounding up the usual suspects: a standard target-gene approach for resolving the interfamilial phylogenetic relationships of ecribellate orb-weaving spiders with a new family-rank classification (Araneae, Araneoidea)| journal=Cladistics| volume=33| issue=3| page=240| doi=10.1111/cla.12165| doi-access=free}}