Enoplognatha ovata
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Enoplognatha ovata |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
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| ( Clerck , 1757) |
Enoplognatha ovata ( synonym : Enoplognatha lineata ) is a widespread species of spider from the family of the canopy or ball spiders .
features
Enoplognatha ovata is very variable in color. The front body (prosoma) and the relatively long legs are pale greenish-yellow to light red-brown, with a narrow, dark longitudinal stripe on the prosoma. The abdomen (opisthosoma) is white or yellowish and often has two noticeable, irregular carmine-red longitudinal stripes, which can also merge into a central band. In addition, there are often two rows of black dots here. Carl Alexander Clerck had described Enoplognatha ovata as three different species, which were later regarded as different basic coloring morphs : var. Lineata with a creamy yellow abdomen, var. Redimita with two red stripes and var. Ovata with a central red shield.
The males are three to five millimeters in length and shorter than the females, which reach six to seven millimeters in length, and have conspicuous, diagonally diverging chelicerae . From the very similar but rarer kind Enoplognatha latimana is E. ovata only be distinguished by features of the sex organs. The epigyne pit in ovata females is just as long as it is wide, and in latimana females it is significantly wider.
Occurrence and way of life
Enoplognatha ovata lives in Europe and westernmost Asia, west to the Irish and French Atlantic coasts, east to a line roughly from the Russian-Finnish border to the Caspian Sea . The species reaches northern Scotland, the Shetlands and southern Scandinavia in the north and the north of the Mediterranean region, approximately up to the 42nd parallel in the south. It is also found along the east and west coasts of North America, in the east up to about 1,000 kilometers inland. Information from other regions is based on the four related, previously often not differentiated species.
The species is often found in dense vegetation in sunny locations. There it covers the tops of plants with an irregular hood network and spins leaves together to form a shelter. The female also deposits the egg cocoon in a spun leaf and guards it until the young hatch.
literature
- Heiko Bellmann: Kosmos-Atlas “Arachnids of Europe” . 2nd Edition. Franckh-Kosmos Verlag, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-440-09071-X , p. 66-67 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ GS Oxford: A countrywide survey of color morph frequencies in the spider Enoplognatha ovata (Clerck) (Araneae: Theridiidae): evidence for natural selection . In: Biological Journal of the Linnean Society . tape 24 , 1985, pp. 103–142 (English, full text [PDF]).
- ↑ a b Enoplognatha ovata at aranea - Spiders of Europe
- ↑ GS Oxford & PR Reillo (1994): The world distributions of species within the Enoplognatha ovata group (Araneae: Theridiidae): implications for their evolution and for previous research. Bulletin of the British arachnological Society 9 (7): 226-232.
