After my first trip to West Africa (Guinea 2009), I had been eager to return to the area, many parts of which are poorly explored with respect to spiders and pholcids in particular. In February and March 2013 I finally had another opportunity to visit West Africa, this time Ghana. Most of the time was spent exploring the more humid southern forests (Ankasa National Park, Kakum National Park, Atewa Hills, Akwapim Togo Range, Mampongtin Range).

 

As expected from my previous trip to Guinea and from unpublished data, the diversity of pholcids was relatively low compared to Central and Eastern Africa. However, compared to what had been known before about Ghanaian pholcids, the trip was a great success: only five species had even been recorded from the country (published in Huber 2007 and Huber 2009), while this trip alone resulted in 18 species. Since West African pholcids tend to have wide geographic ranges, most of these species are known from neighboring countries, but the trip also revealed several new species like the ones shown below (from left: genera Leptopholcus, Smeringopina, Spermophora). In the meantime, all these species have been described and an overview of West African pholcids can be found in Huber & Kwapong 2013.