Lamponidae

White-tailed spider Lampona murina, copyright Ed Nieuwenhuys.

Belongs within: Gnaphosoidea.

The Lamponidae, white-tailed spiders, are a group of ground-hunting spiders found in Australasia, some of which specialise in hunting other spiders. The carapace is elevated in members of the subfamily Pseudolamponinae, ovoid and rather low in Lamponinae and roughly square and fairly high in Centrothelinae (Jocqué & Dippenaar-Schoeman 2007). Members of the family have become notorious for supposedly causing necrotic ulcers with their bite but such accusations appear to be in error.

Characters (from Jocqué & Dippenaar-Schoeman 2007): Tiny to large; eight eyes present in two rows, with posterior median eyes flattened; endites obliquely depressed, often with conspicuous groove along median margin (absent in Pseudolamponinae); legs with two tarsal claws; venter of opisthosoma with pair of invaginated sclerites present just behind epigastric furrow; ecribellate; anterior spinnerets parallel, large, cylindrical and usually well separated; piriform gland spigots of anterior spinnerets not enlarged; entelegyne.

<==Lamponidae
    |  i. s.: Lamponina scutata (Strand 1913) T13
    |         Lamponega forceps Platnick 2000 DH10
    |         Lamponata daviesae Platnick 2000 DH10
    |--Pseudolampona R14 [Pseudolamponinae JD-S07]
    |    `--P. emmett R14
    `--+--+--Lamponella brookfield R14
       |  `--Lampona Thorell 1869 R14, PVD10 [Lamponinae JD-S07]
       |       |--*L. cylindrata (Koch 1866) PVD10 [incl. Drassus formicarius Urquhart 1886 non Lucas 1846 FF99]
       |       |--L. ampeinna Platnick 2000 DH10
       |       |--L. barrow Platnick 2000 T13
       |       |--L. murina Koch 1873 PVD10
       |       `--L. quinqueplagiata Simon 1908 DH10
       `--Centrothelinae PD08
            |--Prionosternum Dunn 1951 PD08
            |--Longepi Platnick 2000 PD08
            |--Centrothele mutica R14
            |--Bigenditia Platnick 2000 PD08
            |    `--B. zuytdorp MC13
            |--Notsodipus Platnick 2000 PD08
            |    |--*N. dalby Platnick 2000 PD08
            |    |--N. linnaei Platnick & Dupérré 2008 PD08
            |    |--N. meedo Platnick 2000 DH10
            |    `--N. quobba PD08
            `--Asadipus Simon 1897 PD08
                 |--A. auld Platnick 2000 DH10
                 |--A. banjiwarn Platnick 2000 DH10
                 |--A. barlee Platnick 2000 DH10
                 |--A. kunderang R14
                 |--A. phaleratus JD-S07
                 `--A. yundamindra Platnick 2000 DH10

*Type species of generic name indicated

REFERENCES

[DH10] Durrant, B. J., M. S. Harvey, V. W. Framenau, R. Ott & J. M. Waldock. 2010. Patterns in the composition of ground-dwelling spider communities in the Pilbara bioregion, Western Australia. Records of the Western Australian Museum Supplement 78 (1): 185–204.

[FF99] Forster, R., & L. Forster. 1999. Spiders of New Zealand and their World-wide Kin. University of Otago Press: Dunedin (New Zealand).

[JD-S07] Jocqué, R., & A. S. Dippenaar-Schoeman. 2007. Spider Families of the World. Royal Museum for Central Africa: Tervuren (Belgium).

[MC13] Majer, J. D., S. K. Callan, K. Edwards, N. R. Gunawardene & C. K. Taylor. 2013. Baseline survey of the terrestrial invertebrate fauna of Barrow Island. Records of the Western Australian Museum Supplement 83: 13–112.

[PVD10] Paquin, P., C. J. Vink & N. Dupérré. 2010. Spiders of New Zealand: annotated family key and species list. Manaaki Whenua Press: Lincoln (New Zealand).

[PD08] Platnick, N. I., & N. Dupérré. 2008. A new species of the spider genus Notsodipus (Araneae: Lamponidae) from Western Australia. Records of the Western Australian Museum 24 (4): 349–350.

[R14] Ramírez, M. J. 2014. The morphology and phylogeny of dionychan spiders (Araneae: Araneomorphae). Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 390: 1–374.

[T13] Taylor, C. K. 2013. Annotated bibliography for Barrow Island terrestrial invertebrates. Records of the Western Australian Museum Supplement 83: 135–144.

Last updated: 17 January 2022.