In December 2025 I returned to northern Chile to search for one particular species. Andres Taucare had directed my attention to specimens that a student had collected high in the Andes above Iquique. At first sight, the photos he sent me reminded of Arteminae or Physocyclinae, but the spiders had only six eyes, and the huge male palps looked very different from those of Priscula and Aucana, the only known representatives of Arteminae and Physocyclinae in South America.
We got fresh material of this remarkable species for molecular work, and found some further interesting species, such as the first representative of Nerudia from northern Chile. We thus confirmed the prediction from distribution modeling (by Leonardo Carvalho), which had suggested that Nerudia should occur in the Atacama biogeographic province (Huber et al. 2023). Northern Chile is a challanging place for life, but the little that is there turns out to be of particular interest.
