The spider family Liphistiidae was first recognized by Tamerlan Thorell in 1869. When narrowly circumscribed, it comprises a single genus Liphistius, native to Southeast Asia; as of April 2024, this was the circumscription accepted by the World Spider Catalog. The family contains the most basal living spiders, belonging to the suborder Mesothelae. The family has also been circumscribed more broadly to include the family Heptathelidae as a subfamily, Heptathelinae, with the narrowly circumscribed Liphistiidae becoming the subfamily Liphistiinae.
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 Entelegynae or entelegynes are a subgroup of araneomorph spiders, the largest of the two main groups into which the araneomorphs were traditionally divided. Females have a genital plate (epigynum) and a "flow through" fertilization system; males have complex palpal bulbs. Molecular phylogenetic studies have supported the monophyly of Entelegynae.
Atypus, also called purseweb spiders, is a genus of atypical tarantulas first described by Pierre André Latreille in 1804. It occurs in Eurasia, with one species reaching into North Africa. Only three of the described species occur in Europe: A. piceus, A. affinis, and A. muralis. Specimens from the USA formerly known as A. snetsingeri represent an introduced population of A. karschi.
Sexual cannibalism is when an animal, usually the female, cannibalizes its mate prior to, during, or after copulation. It is a trait observed in many arachnid orders, several insect and crustacean clades, gastropods, and some snake species. Several hypotheses to explain this seemingly paradoxical behavior have been proposed. The adaptive foraging hypothesis, aggressive spillover hypothesis and mistaken identity hypothesis are among the proposed hypotheses to explain how sexual cannibalism evolved. This behavior is believed to have evolved as a manifestation of sexual conflict, occurring when the reproductive interests of males and females differ. In many species that exhibit sexual cannibalism, the female consumes the male upon detection. Females of cannibalistic species are generally hostile and unwilling to mate; thus many males of these species have developed adaptive behaviors to counteract female aggression.
Nigorella is a genus of jumping spiders that was first described by Wanda Wesołowska & Beata Tomasiewicz in 2008. The name is described as "an arbitrary combination of letters", feminine in gender. Three previously species described were transferred to the genus: Pachypoessa albimana as N. albimana, Philaeus manicus as N. manica, and Euophrys plebeja as N. plebeja. Subsequently it was discovered that Euophrys plebeja was a nomen dubium, with no known type specimen.
Utivarachna is a genus of Asian araneomorph spiders in the family Trachelidae first described by Kyukichi Kishida in 1940. It was largely ignored until Christa L. Deeleman-Reinhold revised the sac and ground spiders in 2001, transferring some species from Trachelas and adding several new ones. The genus was further expanded in 2014 and 2015.
Calamoneta is a genus of southeastern Asian spiders within the family Cheiracanthiidae. It was originally placed in the Miturgidae, but it was moved by Ramírez in 2014. It was named and first described by Christa Deeleman-Reinhold in 2001. The name is derived from the Greek "kalamos", meaning "something woven". There are two species in this genus, C. djojosudharmoi – the type species – and C. urata.
Pristidia is a genus of Asian sac spiders first described by Christa L. Deeleman-Reinhold in 2001.
Medmassa is a genus of corinnid sac spiders first described by Eugène Simon in 1887 under the name "Megaera", later renamed because "Megaera" was already in use as a synonym of the reptile genus Trimeresurus.
Qiongthela is a genus of spiders in the family Heptathelidae. As of 2021, it contains 14 species.
Hongkongia is a genus of Asian ground spiders that was first described by D. X. Song & Ming-Sheng Zhu in 1998.
Sernokorba is a genus of ground spiders that was first described by T. Kamura in 1992. As of May 2019 it contains the following species:
Xizangiana is a genus of East Asian ground spiders. The genus was first described in 2004 under the name Xizangia, but this had already been used for at least two other groups of animals. The replacement name Xizangiana was published by Sherwood, Li & Zhang in 2022. As of June 2022, the genus contains only two species, both found in China: X. linzhiensis and X. rigaze.
Tanzania mkomaziensis is a species of jumping spider in the genus Tanzania that lives in Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania. First described in 2000 by Wanda Wesołowska and Anthony Russell-Smith, it is a very small spider with a carapace between 0.7 and 1.1 mm long and an abdomen between 0.8 and 1.4 mm long. The male spider's carapace is generally yellowish-orange while the female is brown. All have a darker eye field. The spider's abdomen varies, with some being a plain dark grey, greyish or olive-grey and others, particularly those found in Ethiopia, having a dark mosaic pattern. The spider's legs are often black, but some specimen have paler legs and others have yellow legs with black rings. Its pedipalps are yellow and its spinnerets are grey. The spider has distinctive copulatory organs, particularly the short coiled embolus on the male and the sclerotized fringes on the female epigyne.
Phintella parva is a species of jumping spider in the genus Phintella that lives in China, Japan, Korea and Russia. The spider is yellow in colour and small, measuring between 3.5 and 4 mm in body length. It exhibits sexual dimorphism, with the female being slightly larger than the male. The abdomen has a striped pattern and the carapace has circular markings, but the most significant difference to other members of the genus are its copulatory organs, particularly the short curved embolus in the male and the long straight insemination ducts in the female. The species was first described by Wanda Wesołowska in 1981 based on a specimen collected in North Korea. The spider was originally classified within the genus Icius under the name Icius parvus, but was transferred to its current genus by Jerzy Prószyński in 1983. It was also recognised that other examples of the spider had been previously collected, including, at one time, a description of one found in the Soviet Union published in 1979 without a species name.
Euophrys subtilis is a species of jumping spider in the genus Euophrys that is endemic to South Africa. The species was first described in 2014 by Wanda Wesołowska, Galina Azarkina and Anthony Russell-Smith. It is a small spider, with a body that consists of a cephalothorax that measures between 1.6 and 1.7 mm long and a abdomen that is between 1.7 mm and 1.9 mm (0.07 in) long. The carapace, the topside of the cephalothorax, is dark brown and the underside of the cephalothorax, or sternum, is a lighter brown. The pattern on the abdomen differs between the female and the male. The female has a creamy-white surface that is marked with dark spots. The male has a brown band across its brownish-grey surface. They have brown legs. The copulatory organs enable the spider to be distinguished from other species in the genus. The male has a long thin embolus on its palpal bulb, although not as long as Euophrys nana. The female has wide insemination ducts that loop in the middle and spherical spermathecae.
Pseudicius wesolowskae is a species of jumping spider in the genus Pseudicius that lives in Hebei, China. The spider was first described in 2001 by Mingsheng Zhu and Daxiang Song. The spider is small, with a body length that is between 3.43 and 3.78 mm. The male is larger than the female. The spider has a light brown carapace with a black eye field. The abdomen is a dark brown on the top, marked by a pattern of white spots, and grey-yellow underneath, with a pattern of yellow-white spots. The copulatory organs enable the species to be distinguished from others in the genus. The male has a long embolus and unusual tibial apophyses. The female has a cross-shaped marking towards the rear of its epigyne. The species is named after the Polish arachnologist Wanda Wesołowska.
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Detalik is a genus of jumping spiders, consisting of four species. The genus was circumscribed in 2021 by Wanda Wesołowska, along with descriptions of the type species Detalik anthonyi and two other species. These were all found in Nigeria, although another species described in 2022 lives in Ivory Coast. Generally, the members of the genus are very small spiders, between 3.5 and 5 mm long. They have distinctive features in their mouthparts, including a short fang on their jaws, or chelicerae, along with a two small teeth to the front and a large tooth to the back. The upper part of their body, the carapace, is noticeable for its almost vertical sloping back and the front legs are characterised with very long spikes on the tibia and metatarsus. While each species has unique reproductive organs, there are some common features: males have a spike at the back of a structure used during mating while females have their reproductive openings hidden in a small indentation in the visible part of their copulatory organs, the epigyne.
