''Amaurobioides major'' is a species of

Anyphaenidae Anyphaenidae is a family of araneomorph spiders, sometimes called anyphaenid sac spiders or ghost spiders. They are distinguished from the sac spiders of the family Clubionidae and other spiders by having the abdominal spiracle placed one third ...

spider that is endemic to

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

Taxonomy

This species was described in 1970 by

Ray Forster Raymond Robert Forster (19 June 1922 – 1 July 2000) was a New Zealand Arachnology, arachnologist and museum director. He was a Fellow of The Entomological Society of New Zealand. Biography Forster was born in Hastings, New Zealand in 1922, a ...

from a female specimen collected in Caswell Sound. The holotype is stored in

Te Papa Museum The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa is New Zealand's national museum and is located in Wellington. Usually known as Te Papa (Māori for ' the treasure box'), it opened in 1998 after the merging of the National Museum of New Zealand an ...

under registration number AS.000062.

Description

The female is recorded at 11.72mm in length. This species has a reddish brown carapace and a brown abdomen that has pale chevron markings dorsally.

Distribution

This species is only known from Caswell Sound in

Fiordland Fiordland (, "The Pit of Tattooing", and also translated as "the Shadowlands"), is a non-administrative geographical region of New Zealand in the south-western corner of the South Island, comprising the western third of Southland. Most of F ...

, New Zealand. Like all ''

Amaurobioides ''Amaurobioides'' is a genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV ...

'', it lives along the spray zone of rocky coasts.

Conservation status

Under the

New Zealand Threat Classification System The New Zealand Threat Classification System is used by the Department of Conservation to assess conservation priorities of species in New Zealand. The system was developed because the IUCN Red List, a similar conservation status system, had s ...

, this species is listed as "Data Deficient" with the qualifiers of "Climate Impact", "Data Poor: Size", "Data Poor: Trend", "One Location" and "Range Restricted".

References

Anyphaenidae Endemic spiders of New Zealand Spiders described in 1970 {{Anyphaenidae-stub