What I found in a few days surpassed by far all my expectations. Not only was I deeply impressed by the beauty and diversity of landscapes, but I even found pholcid spiders almost everywhere. To my knowledge, only one (still undescribed) species of Pholcidae has ever been recorded from the country, but I found ten species, nine of them new to science. This is the highest percentage of new species I have ever had in any trip.
This trip tought me a lot about pholcids. In theory I had known before that pholcids occur in dry areas, but when I found them under relatively small hot rocks in the desert, far from any wadi, I was still highly surprised. At the spots shown above, I found Ninetis (left) and Artema (right).
These are the spiders I found at the localities shown above. Left: Artema, one of the largest pholcids worldwide; right: Ninetis (adult male!), one of the smallest pholcids. However, most diversity in the Oman seems to be in the genus Crossopriza. I found six species, all undescribed, with a surprising range of body shapes (below).
