''Artifex'' is a small

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial n ...

orb-weaver spider Orb-weaver spiders are members of the spider family Araneidae. They are the most common group of builders of spiral wheel-shaped webs often found in gardens, fields, and forests. The English word "orb" can mean "circular", hence the English name ...

s native to tropical regions of mainland Australia and to New Caledonia. The genus was erected by R. J. Kallal and Gustavo Hormiga in 2018 to contain two species moved from different genera that have several

synapomorphies In phylogenetics, an apomorphy (or derived trait) is a novel character or character state that has evolved from its ancestral form (or plesiomorphy). A synapomorphy is an apomorphy shared by two or more taxa and is therefore hypothesized to hav ...

, including an

abdomen The abdomen (colloquially called the belly, tummy, midriff, tucky or stomach) is the part of the body between the thorax (chest) and pelvis, in humans and in other vertebrates. The abdomen is the front part of the abdominal segment of the tors ...

that extends past the

spinneret A spinneret is a silk-spinning organ of a spider or the larva of an insect. Some adult insects also have spinnerets, such as those borne on the forelegs of Embioptera. Spinnerets are usually on the underside of a spider's opisthosoma, and are ...

s, widely separated

spermatheca The spermatheca (pronounced plural: spermathecae ), also called receptaculum seminis (plural: receptacula seminis), is an organ of the female reproductive tract in insects, e.g. ants, bees, some molluscs, oligochaeta worms and certain othe ...

e, and dorsal markings similar to those of Zygiellinae. The name is a combination of the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...

ars Ars or ARS may refer to: Places * Ars, Iran, a village in East Azerbaijan Province, Iran * ''Ars'', various communes in France: ** Ars, Charente, in the Charente ''département'' ** Ars, Creuse, in the Creuse ''département'' ** Ars-en-Ré, in ...

", meaning "art", and " -fex", meaning "maker" in reference to the shelters they build out of leaves. it contains only two species: '' A. joannae'' and '' A. melanopyga''.

See also

References

Further reading