Most of these species were found in southern to southwestern China and Japan, where many caves are scattered in the karst areas. However no species has been so far known from the Himalayan region. Most species of cavernicolous pselaphines belong to the tribes Batrisini, Amauropini, and Bythinini, while members are relatively rare in other tribes. Currently, the pselaphite tribe Tmesiphorini has no true troglobitic/cavernicolous species; all of the few existing records indicated that occurrence of some species of the genera Dacnotillus Raffray, Tmesiphorus LeConte, and Tmesiphorites Jeannel at the entrance or inside of caves or sinkholes are probably accidental, because there are no obvious morphological adaptions for cavernicolous life, and some species (e.g., Tmesiphorus costalis LeConte) are widely distributed, being found also in leaf litters, under bark, and with ants (Raffray et al. 1892; Chandler 1992; Jeannel 1953). The genus Pseudophanias Raffray is one of the 30 extant genera of the Tmesiphorini (Yin et al. 2013), its members are distinct in possessing small, unmodified maxillary palpi, and often strongly modified antennae in the male. Achille Raffray described (Raffray 1890a, 1890b, 1895, 1905) all ten hitherto known species that occur in West Malaysia (Penang; 4 spp.), Singapore (2 spp.), and Indonesia (Sumatra; 4 spp.). All of these are localized species, with four collected from sifted litter samples in forests, and the rest of uncertain ecological status. In this paper we describe a new species with remarkably elongate body form and appendages, collected by Dr. Petar Beron (Sofia, Bulgaria) in a cave (Mahendra Gupha) in central Nepal. While the genus Pseudophanias requires a complete revision, this species is quite distinctive in comparison to its nemoricolous relatives.
