Spooky, subterranean daddy longlegs with ghostly pale bodies discovered

Two new species of blind and colorless daddy longlegs spider have been discovered — one in the dry western region of Australia, and one on the lush tropical island of Réunion.

Both of the species live in underground habitats, which likely led to their colorless bodies and blindness. And researchers believe that both of these subterranean spiders could tell us an interesting story about the way species evolve and move over time.

This study "really highlights why it is that biodiversity discovery matters and how it is that you can find really unusual species in some of the strangest places that you look," Prashant Sharma, a biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved in the new research, told Live Science.

Spiders in the Pholcidae family are found all over the world and are notable for their long, spindly legs,  which earned them the common nickname "daddy longlegs." Because they tend to live in dark places, such as basements, they're also often called "cellar spiders." The researchers published descriptions of these two new Pholcid species on July 24 in the journal Subterranean Biology.

Related: Are daddy longlegs really the venomous spiders in the world?

These daddy longleg spiders should not be confused with harvestmen, another type of arachnid often referred to as daddy longlegs. Unlike these Pholcid spiders, which look like regular spiders with two distinct body sections, harvestmen often look like they have a single, round body section hoisted aloft by their wire-thin legs.

The first new Pholcid spider was discovered in mining boreholes of the Pilabra, a dry and rocky habitat in a remote corner of Western Australia. The species belongs to the genus Belisana, which — prior to this study — was thought to only live hundreds of miles away, in Asia and the more vegetated northeast region of Australia.