Food spiders
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Spider ( Scytodes thoracica ) |
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| Scytodidae | ||||||||||||
| Blackwall , 1864 |
Spitting spider (Scytodidae), also Leimschleuderspinnen are a family haplogyner , real spiders (Araneomorphae). The family currently comprises 5 genera and 232 species , with the genus Scytodes being the most species-rich with 221 species. (As of April 2016). They hunt their prey through threads of glue flung out of the jaws ( chelicerae ). Not to be confused with them is the family Sicariidae , which is sometimes also called "food spiders" .
The only species of this family native to Central Europe , the three to six millimeter tall edible spider ( Scytodes thoracica ), lives exclusively in buildings in Central Europe.
description
Members of the food spiders are the only spiders that overwhelm their prey from a distance. They locate their prey with cup hairs (trichobothria) on the front pair of legs. From transformed poison glands, they spit a mixture of poison and glue up to 20 millimeters wide on their prey through enlarged chelicerae openings. The converted poison glands have a storage chamber in the spider's front body, which is emptied by muscle contraction. The prey animals are stuck to the ground in 140 ms by the glue, which is spatially spat out in a zigzag shape and exactly 20 times, both horizontally and vertically, and is stunned by the poison in order to be eaten . Sometimes the chelicerae oscillate only horizontally or only vertically. Why this is so is still unclear. Glue and poison work immediately. The prey is selected according to size and speed of movement.
The spinnerets are still there. The males make a thread before copulation, which is then held by the third pair of legs and passed over the genital opening to collect the sperm . The sperm is then absorbed into the bulbs by the thickening of the pedipalps (jaw palpation). Finally, the bulbs are inserted into the sexual opening (without epigyne ) of the female. The female spins an egg sac, which she holds in place with the chelicerae and carries around with her under the sternum - on her breast.
Systematics
The World Spider Catalog currently lists 5 genera and 232 species for food spiders, of which 221 species belong to the genus Scytodes . (As of April 2016)
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Dictis
L. Koch , 1872
- Dictis denticulata Dankittipakul & Singtripop , 2010
- Dictis elongata Dankittipakul & Singtripop , 2010
- Dictis ganeshi Keswani , 2015
- Dictis mumbaiensis Ahmed et al. , 2015
- Dictis striatipes L. Koch , 1872
- Dictis thailandica Dankittipakul & Singtripop , 2010
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Scyloxes Dunin , 1992
- Scyloxes asiatica Dunin , 1992
- Scytodes Latreille , 1804
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Soeuria Saaristo , 1997
- Soeuria soeur Saaristo , 1997
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Stedocys Ono , 1995
- Stedocys leopoldi ( Giltay , 1935)
- Stedocys pagodas Labarque, Grismado, Ramírez, Yan & Griswold , 2009
- Stedocys uenorum Ono , 1995
Fossil evidence
Fossil spiders are extremely rare. A few specimens were recovered from Eocene Baltic amber and the predominantly somewhat younger Dominican amber , all of which belong to the genus Scytodes .
Web links
Scytodidae in the World Spider Catalog
literature
- Foelix, Rainer F. 1979. Spider Biology. Georg Thieme Verlag Stuttgart. ISBN 3-13-575801-X
- Gertsch, Willis J. 1979: American Spiders, 2nd edition. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York. ISBN 0-442-22649-7
- Watson, L., and Dallwitz, MJ 2004 onwards. The families of spiders represented in the British Isles. Version: 23rd October 2005.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Natural History Museum of the Burgergemeinde Bern: World Spider Catalog Version 17.0 - Scytodidae . Retrieved April 1, 2016.
- ↑ Jörg Wunderlich: The first fossil food spiders (Fam. Scytodidae) in Baltic amber (Arachnida: Araneae). Mitt. Geol.-Paleont. Inst. Univ. Hamburg, Hamburg 1993.