Family STIPHIDIIDAE Dalmas, 1917

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Family STIPHIDIIDAE Dalmas, 1917

Introduction

This is another cribellate group that continues to resist widely acceptable diagnosis. It includes cribellate and ecribellate taxa, with webs varying from the remarkable sombrero web of Stiphidion to the simple sheet of Cambridgea and Procambridgea. The New Zealand Ischalea is apparently free-living.

The subfamily Stiphidiinae was erected in the Psechridae by Dalmas (1917) for the genera Stiphidion and Stiphidiellum; the latter genus is now synonymised under Laestrygones (Desidae). Lehtinen (1967: 309) transferred Stiphidiinae to Amaurobiidae, added two new genera to the subfamily, and synonymised the New Zealand genus Amarara Marples (Dictynidae) with Stiphidion. Forster & Wilton (1973) recognised the relationship between several endemic New Zealand genera, Stiphidion, and some other Australian genera. They raised the subfamily Stiphidiinae to family status (Forster & Wilton 1973: 128) and collected these genera into the one family. Additional key genera were described from both countries at this time. Subsequently new stiphidiid genera were described in the new subfamily Borralinae Gray & Smith, 2008. Gray & Smith left most existing taxa either unplaced, or in the nominate Stiphidiinae. The subfamily Kababininae Davies, 1999, with its four genera, was also transferred into Stiphidiidae from the Amphinectidae by Gray & Smith (2008).

Stiphidiids are currently recorded from Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea and New Caledonia, and two poorly known species of uncertain affinities are from Mauritius and Madagascar. It is likely that the family is also represented in South America. The family Stiphidiidae remains poorly diagnosed and with uncertain affinities (Jocqué & Dippenaar-Schoeman 2007). These issues are part of a much larger problem involving southern “amaurobioid” taxa in families such as Amphinectidae, Agelenidae and Desidae.

Diagnosis

Three-clawed, cribellate spiders with strongly recurved or procurved back eye row and pre-distal tarsal fracture; males have a T-shaped conductor. Stiphidiion makes a characteristic umbrella-like web joined to the substrate by a narrow silken column with narrow arches through which the spiders run. Stiphidiids may be distinguished from other amaurobioid spiders by the tarsi predistally with pallid diagonal fracture; retrocoxal hymen on leg I absent; trochanteral notches shallow on IV becoming shallower from III–I and 3 claws.