Wolf spiders are members of the family Lycosidae, named for their robust and agile hunting skills and excellent eyesight. They live mostly in solitude, hunt alone, and usually do not spin webs. Some are opportunistic hunters, pouncing upon prey as they find it or chasing it over short distances; others wait for passing prey in or near the mouth of a burrow. Wolf spiders resemble nursery web spiders, but wolf spiders carry their egg sacs by attaching them to their spinnerets, while the Pisauridae carry their egg sacs with their chelicerae and pedipalps. Two of the wolf spider's eight eyes are large and prominent; this distinguishes them from nursery web spiders, whose eyes are all of roughly equal size. This can also help distinguish them from the similar-looking grass spiders.
Desidae is a family of spiders, some of which are known as intertidal spiders. The family is named for the genus Desis, members of which inhabit the intertidal zone. The family has been reevaluated in recent years and now includes inland genera and species as well, such as Badumna and Phryganoporus. In 2017, the family Amphinectidae was merged into Desidae and the family Toxopidae was separated from it. Those intertidal spiders that are truly marine commonly live in barnacle shells, which they seal up with silk; this allows them to maintain an air bubble during high tide. They emerge at night to feed on various small arthropods that live in the intertidal zone.
Ground spiders comprise Gnaphosidae, the seventh largest spider family with over 2,000 described species in over 100 genera distributed worldwide. There are 105 species known to central Europe, and common genera include Gnaphosa, Drassodes, Micaria, Cesonia, Zelotes and many others. They are closely related to Clubionidae. At present, no ground spiders are known to be seriously venomous to humans.
The Agelenidae are a large family of spiders in the suborder Araneomorphae. Well-known examples include the common "grass spiders" of the genus Agelenopsis. Nearly all Agelenidae are harmless to humans, but the bite of the hobo spider may be medically significant, and some evidence suggests it might cause necrotic lesions, but the matter remains subject to debate. The most widely accepted common name for members of the family is funnel weaver.
Linyphiidae, spiders commonly known as sheet weavers, or money spiders is a family of very small spiders comprising 4706 described species in 620 genera worldwide. This makes Linyphiidae the second largest family of spiders after the Salticidae. The family is poorly understood due to their small body size and wide distribution; new genera and species are still being discovered throughout the world. The newest such genus is Himalafurca from Nepal, formally described in April 2021 by Tanasevitch. Since it is so difficult to identify such tiny spiders, there are regular changes in taxonomy as species are combined or divided.
Wandering spiders (Ctenidae) are a family of spiders that includes the Brazilian wandering spiders. These spiders have a distinctive longitudinal groove on the top-rear of their oval carapace similar to those of the Amaurobiidae. They are highly defensive and venomous nocturnal hunters. Wandering spiders are known to hunt large prey, for example hylid species Dendropsophus branneri. Despite their notoriety for being dangerous, only a few members of Phoneutria have venom known to be hazardous to humans, but the venoms of this family are poorly known, so all larger ctenids should be treated with caution.
Dictynidae is a family of cribellate, hackled band-producing spiders first described by Octavius Pickard-Cambridge in 1871. Most build irregular webs on or near the ground, creating a tangle of silken fibers among several branches or stems of one plant.
Dwarf sheet spiders (Hahniidae) is a family of araneomorph spiders, first described by Philipp Bertkau in 1878.
Dictyna is a genus of cribellate araneomorph spiders in the family Dictynidae, and was first described by Carl Jakob Sundevall in 1833.
Pycnothelidae is a family of mygalomorph spiders first described in 1917. It was downgraded to a subfamily of the funnel-web trapdoor spiders in 1985, but returned to family status in 2020.
