Steatoda

Steatoda bipunctata, copyright Roger Harris.

Belongs within: Theridiidae.

Steatoda, false widow spiders, are a cosmopolitan genus of dark-coloured cobweb spiders. A number of species in this genus are found in association with humans.

Characters (from Levi 1962): Medium-sized to large, usually dark in coloration. Colulus very large. Chelicerae armed with a tooth or several teeth on anterior margin; posterior margin of female chelicerae without teeth. Abdomen subspherical. Males often with enlarged chelicerae and a sclerotized ring around pedicel on anterior end of abdomen. Abdomen of most species with white line around anterior of dorsum, in addition to other lines or spots.

<==Steatoda
    |--S. albomaculata (De Geer 1778) PO08
    |--S. ancorata (Holmberg 1876) FM11
    |--S. bipunctata CM07
    |--S. capensis FF99
    |--S. caricis Fickert 1876 (n. d.) [=Enoplognatha caricis] W76
    |--S. castanea CM07
    |--S. diamantina Levi 1962 FM11
    |--S. erigoniformis (Pickard-Cambridge 1872) PO08
    |--S. femorale E07
    |--S. fulva (Keyserling 1884) GLV14
    |--S. grossa (Koch 1838) [incl. Theridium sericum Urquhart 1886] NS00
    |--S. latifasciata (Simon 1873) PO08
    |--S. lepida FF99
    |--S. livens B96
    |--S. maura (Simon 1909) PO08
    |--S. nubilosa Urquhart 1893 (n. d.) NS00
    |--S. paykulliana (Walckenaer 1805) PO08
    |--S. triangulosa (Walckenaer 1802) PO08
    `--S. truncata (Urquhart 1888) [=Theridium truncatum] NS00

*Type species of generic name indicated

REFERENCES

[B96] Brunet, B. 1996. Spiderwatch: A Guide to Australian Spiders. Reed New Holland: Sydney.

[CM07] Cokendolpher, J. C., & P. G. Mitov. 2007. Natural enemies. In: Pinto-da-Rocha, R., G. Machado & G. Giribet (eds) Harvestmen: The Biology of Opiliones pp. 339–373. Harvard University Press: Cambridge (Massachusetts).

[E07] Elliott, M. G. 2007. Annotated catalogue of the Pompilidae (Hymenoptera) of Australia. Zootaxa 1428: 1–83.

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

[FM11] Freire-Jr, G. de B., & P. C. Motta. 2011. Effects of experimental fire regimes on the abundance and diversity of cursorial arachnids of Brazilian savannah (cerrado biome). Journal of Arachnology 39 (2): 263–272.

[GLV14] García, L. F., M. Lacava & C. Viera. 2014. Diet composition and prey selectivity by the spider Oecobius concinnus (Araneae: Oecobiidae) from Colombia. Journal of Arachnology 42 (2): 199–201.

Levi, H. W. 1962. The spider genera Steatoda and Enoplognatha in America (Araneae, Theridiidae). Psyche 69: 11–36.

[NS00] Nicholls, D. C., P. J. Sirvid, S. D. Pollard & M. Walker. 2000. A list of arachnid primary types held in Canterbury Museum. Records of the Canterbury Museum 14: 37–48.

[PO08] Pluess, T., I. Opatovsky, E. Gavish-Regev, Y. Lubin & M. H. Schmidt. 2008. Spiders in wheat fields and semi-desert in the Negev (Israel). Journal of Arachnology 36 (2): 368–373.

[W76] Wunderlich, J. 1976. Zur Spinnenfauna Deutschlands, XVI. Zur Kenntnis der mitteleuropäischen Arten der Gattungen Enoplognatha Pavesi und Robertus O. Pick.-Cambridge (Araneida: Theridiidae). Senckenbergiana Biologica 57 (1–3): 97–112.