Neoholothele

Neoholothele is a small New World tarantula genus erected in 2015 by José Paulo Leite Guadanucci and Dirk Weinmann after a phylogenetic study showed that the long-used genus Holothele was not actually a natural, monophyletic group. To restore order to the family tree, several spiders once placed in Holothele were reassigned, and a new genus, Neoholothele, was created for a distinctive Caribbean–northern South American lineage.

The type species, Neoholothele incei, was originally described all the way back in 1898–1899 by F. O. Pickard-Cambridge under other names (first as Hapalopus incei, then long treated as Holothele incei). Only with Guadanucci & Weinmann’s 2015 revision was it transferred into Neoholothele, reflecting its real relationships within the subfamily Schismatothelinae.

Today the genus contains just two recognised species: Neoholothele incei from Trinidad & Tobago and nearby Venezuela, and Neoholothele fasciaaurinigra from Colombia. Both share a dark carapace with a golden cephalic region and banded abdomen, features that help separate Neoholothele from related genera.

Over the years, several other old names have been shuffled around or synonymised, and some former Holothele species once thought distinct (such as H. longipes and H. vellardi) are now considered the same as N. incei, emphasizing how much our understanding of these spiders has changed as more specimens and modern analyses became available.