Antrodiaetidae, also known as folding trapdoor spiders or folding-door spiders, is a small
spider
Spiders (order Araneae) are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, chelicerae with fangs generally able to inject venom, and spinnerets that extrude silk. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species ...
family related to
atypical tarantulas. They are found almost exclusively in the western and midwestern United States, from
California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
to
Washington
Washington commonly refers to:
* Washington (state), United States
* Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States
** A metonym for the federal government of the United States
** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...
and east to the
Appalachian mountains
The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, (french: Appalaches), are a system of mountains in eastern to northeastern North America. The Appalachians first formed roughly 480 million years ago during the Ordovician Period. The ...
.
Exceptions include ''
Antrodiaetus roretzi'' and ''
Antrodiaetus yesoensis'', which are endemic to
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...
and are considered
relict
A relict is a surviving remnant of a natural phenomenon.
Biology
A relict (or relic) is an organism that at an earlier time was abundant in a large area but now occurs at only one or a few small areas.
Geology and geomorphology
In geology, a r ...
species. It is likely that two separate
vicariance
Allopatric speciation () – also referred to as geographic speciation, vicariant speciation, or its earlier name the dumbbell model – is a mode of speciation that occurs when biological populations become geographically isolated from ...
events led to the evolution of these two species.
Genera
, the
World Spider Catalog
The World Spider Catalog (WSC) is an online searchable database concerned with spider taxonomy. It aims to list all accepted families, genera and species, as well as provide access to the related taxonomic literature. The WSC began as a series of ...
accepted the following genera:
*''
Aliatypus''
Smith, 1908 — United States
*''
Antrodiaetus''
Ausserer, 1871 — United States, Japan
*''
Atypoides''
O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1883 — United States
*''
Hexura''
Simon, 1884 — United States
Name
The name “folding-door” describes how they open or close the entrance to their burrow; they unfold or fold the door.
See also
*
List of Antrodiaetidae species
References
* Hendrixson, B.E. & Bond, J.E. (2005). Two sympatric species of ''Antrodiaetus'' from southwestern North Carolina (Araneae, Mygalomorphae, Antrodiaetidae). ''Zootaxa'' 872:1-19
PDF(''A. unicolor'', ''A. microunicolor'')
External links
Mygalomorphae families
Taxa named by Willis J. Gertsch
{{Mygalomorphae-stub