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Authors: Botero-Trujillo, R. and Prendini, L.
Ricinulei Thorell, 1876, or “hooded tick-spiders,” are an ancient, relictual, and cryptic order of arachnids comprising 104 extant species traditionally accommodated in three genera. Although six phylogenetic hypotheses have been proposed to date (Platnick, 1980; Selden, 1992; Murienne et al., 2013; Fernández and Giribet, 2015; Benavides et al., 2021; Sato et al., 2024), the relationships among the three currently recognized genera of Ricinulei remain unresolved and the monophyly of both New World genera has been questioned. The first quantitative intraordinal phylogeny of Ricinulei based on morphology is presented, focusing on the African taxa, currently assigned to the genus Ricinoides Ewing, 1929, and selected exemplar species of the New World genera, Cryptocellus Westwood, 1874, and Pseudocellus Platnick, 1980, as outgroups. The character matrix, comprising 80 discrete characters scored for 27 species, was analyzed with parsimony and Maximum Likelihood. A preferred topology, corresponding to the consensus of three optimal trees, the stability of which was insensitive to a range of weighting regimes, is presented. This topology recovered the African Ricinulei as monophyletic, in turn forming a monophyletic group with Cryptocellus, to the exclusion of Pseudocellus. Although this hypothesis of ricinuleid intraordinal relationships differs from the hypotheses obtained by molecular phylogenetic analyses, it is consistent with the sequence of vicariance events resulting from the breakup of Pangaea (ca. 200–180 Ma), which separated Pseudocellus from all other ricinuleids, and Gondwana (ca. 140–120 Ma), which separated Cryptocellus from the African Ricinulei. Due to the high levels of morphological divergence among the clades recovered by the analysis, Ricinoides is redefined and restricted to nine species from Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Togo, but also present in the Gambia and Senegal, and five new genera are defined: Alantakun, gen. nov., comprising a single species from Cameroon, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon; Bambara, gen. nov., comprising three species from Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, but also present in Liberia; Gizoo, gen. nov., comprising a single species from Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea (Bioko Island); Tautau, gen. nov., comprising two species from Guinea and Sierra Leone, but also present in Côte d’Ivoire; and Ududo, gen. nov., comprising two species from Cameroon and Nigeria. Six new combinations are presented: Alantakun karschii (Hansen and Sørensen, 1904), comb. nov.; Bambara hanseni (Legg, 1976), comb. nov.; Bambara megahanseni (Legg, 1982), comb. nov.; Gizoo crassipalpe (Hansen and Sørensen, 1904), comb. nov.; Tautau leonensis (Legg, 1978), comb. nov.; and Ududo sjostedtii (Hansen and Sørensen, 1904), comb. nov. Three new species are described and illustrated: Bambara jocquei, sp. nov., and Tautau ziama, sp. nov., both from Guinea, and Ududo tuxeni, sp. nov., from Nigeria. A new synonym is presented: Ricinoides olounoua Legg, 1978 = Alantakun karschii (Hansen and Sørensen, 1904), syn. nov. Revised diagnoses are provided for all other African species. In all, six genera and 18 species of Ricinulei are presently recorded from 14 African countries. A key to the identification of the African genera and species is presented, as well as maps plotting their known distributions. The male copulatory apparatus of the African species is studied and six “types” are recognized. Morphological characters useful for the classification and identification of African Ricinulei, are illustrated.