Twelve living-fossil spiders, new to science, from Guizhou's hills

In Guizhou's hills, some of Earth's oldest spider lineages still guard their silk-lined trapdoors. Taxonomists Xu, Zhang and Li have formally described 12 new species of segmented trapdoor spiders, genus Songthela, from the province, each documented with photographs, distribution maps and DNA barcodes in the journal Zoosystematics and Evolution. These spiders belong to an ancient family whose body plan has changed little over immense spans of time — a reminder that even well-walked provinces still hold whole species that science has never named.

SDG 15 · Life on land