Dipluridae

Female Ischnothele caudata, copyright Marshal Hedin.

Belongs within: Avicularoidea.

The Dipluridae are a group of mygalomorph spiders that capture prey with a sheet web attached to a funnel-shaped retreat. They are distinguished by an extremely long, widely spaced pair of posterior spinnerets that extend well past the abdomen; the median spinnerets are much shorter but also widely spaced (Jocqué & Dippenaar-Schoeman 2007). Within the family, members of the subfamily Diplurinae have two rows of teeth on the paired claws of the legs; other subfamilies possess a single row of teeth.

Characters (from Jocqué & Dippenaar-Schoeman 2007): Small to large; cephalic region low; eight eyes present in a compact rectangular group; rastellum present, cheliceral furrow with two rows of strong teeth; legs with three tarsal claws; four spinnerets present, widely spaced, posterior pair very long.

<==Dipluridae
    |--Masteriinae JD-S07
    |--Euagrus BS09 [Euagrinae JD-S07]
    |    `--E. chisoseus BS09
    |--Ischnothele Ausserer 1875 PCBFF08 [Ischnothelinae JD-S07]
    |    |--I. annulata Tullgren 1905 FM11
    |    |--I. caudata Ausserer 1875 PCBFF08
    |    |--I. guyanensis B06
    |    `--I. mashonica Pocock 1901 P01
    `--Diplurinae JD-S07
         |  i. s.: Clostes priscus Menge 1869 S02
         |         Diplura Koch 1850 PCBFF08
         |--Pseudatrax Rainbow 1914 [Pseudatraceae] R14
         |    `--*P. moreaui Rainbow 1914 R14
         |--Poikilomorphia Rainbow 1914 [Poikilomorphiae] R14
         |    `--*P. montana Rainbow 1914 R14
         `--Brachytheleae R14
              |--Brachythele chinensis Kulczyński 1901 R14, K01
              `--Euctimena Rainbow 1914 R14
                   `--*E. tibialis Rainbow 1914 R14

Dipluridae incertae sedis:
  Trechona Koch 1850 [incl. Eudiplura Simon 1892, Onysopelma Simon 1864, Pezionyx Simon 1864] PCBFF08
    |--T. rogenhoferi (Ausserer 1871) (n. d.) [=Diplura rogenhoferi, Eudiplura rogenhoferi] PCBFF08
    |--T. rufa Vellard 1924 [=T. venosa rufa] PCBFF08
    |--T. uniformis Mello-Leitão 1935 PCBFF08
    `--T. venosa (Latreille 1832) PCBFF08
  Linothele Karsch 1879 PCBFF08
    |--L. megatheloides Paz & Platnick 1977 PCBFF08
    `--L. sericata (Karsch 1879) [=Trechona sericata] PCBFF08
  Allothele JD-S07
  Thelechoris karschi E95
  Dekana diversicolor K77
  Microhexura montivaga E95
  Namea R95

*Type species of generic name indicated

REFERENCES

[B06] Banks, N. 1906. Arachnida from the Bahamas. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 22: 185–189.

[BS09] Blackledge, T. A., N. Scharff, J. A. Coddington, T. Szüts, J. W. Wenzel, C. Y. Hayashi & I. Agnarsson. 2009. Reconstructing web evolution and spider diversification in the molecular era. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 106 (13): 5229–5234.

[E95] Elgar, M. A. 1995. The duration of copulation in spiders: comparative patterns. Records of the Western Australian Museum Supplement 52: 1–11.

[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.

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

[K77] Koch, L. E. 1977. The taxonomy, geographic distribution and evolutionary radiation of Australo-Papuan scorpions. Records of the Western Australian Museum 5 (2): 83–367.

[PCBFF08] Pedroso, D. R., R. L. Cerqueira Baptista & P. S. Fiúza Ferreira. 2008. Trechona rufa (Araneae, Dipluridae): new status, redescription and neotype designation with notes on the genus. Journal of Arachnology 36 (2): 360–367.

[P01] Pocock, R. I. 1901. Diagnoses of some new species of spiders from Mashonaland. Annals and Magazine of Natural History, series 7, 7: 337–340.

[R14] Rainbow, W. J. 1914. Studies in Australian Araneidae, no. 6, the Terretelariae. Records of the Australian Museum 10 (8): 187–270.

[R95] Raven, R. J. 1995. Coxal glands of spiders of the genera Bymainiella, Atrax and Namea (Hexathelidae, Dipluridae, Mygalomorphae). Records of the Western Australian Museum Supplement 52: 67–71.

[S02] Selden, P. A. 2002. First British Mesozoic spider, from Cretaceous amber of the Isle of Wight, southern England. Palaeontology 45 (5): 973–983.

Last updated: 16 June 2020.