The spider family Liphistiidae was first recognized by

Tamerlan Thorell Tord Tamerlan Teodor Thorell (3 May 1830 – 22 December 1901) was a Sweden, Swedish arachnologist. Thorell studied spiders with Giacomo Doria at the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale de Genoa. He corresponded with other arachnologists, such as Oc ...

in 1869. When narrowly circumscribed, it comprises a single genus '' Liphistius'', native to

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, southeastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of China, east of the Indian subcontinent, and northwest of the Mainland Au ...

; , this was the circumscription accepted by 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 ...

. The family contains the most basal living

spider Spiders (order (biology), order Araneae) are air-breathing arthropods that have eight limbs, chelicerae with fangs generally able to inject venom, and spinnerets that extrude spider silk, silk. They are the largest order of arachnids and ran ...

s, belonging to the suborder

Mesothelae The Mesothelae are a suborder of spiders (order Araneae). , two extant families were accepted by the World Spider Catalog, Liphistiidae and Heptathelidae. Alternatively, the Heptathelidae can be treated as a subfamily of a more broadly circum ...

. The family has also been circumscribed more broadly to include the family Heptathelidae as a subfamily, Heptathelinae, with the narrowly circumscribed Liphistiidae becoming the subfamily Liphistiinae.

Taxonomy

The family Liphistiidae was erected by

in 1869 for the genus ''Liphistius''. Initially, it was the only family placed in the suborder Mesothelae. In 1923,

Kyukichi Kishida was a Japanese zoologist, who published in arachnology, mammalogy, and herpetology. He described several spider Genus, genera and species including : * ''Heptathela'' ** ''Heptathela kimurai'' (Kimura-gumo) * ''Pireneitega'' References * ...

described a new genus, '' Heptathela'', and suggested creating two tribes within the Liphistiidae corresponding to the genera ''Liphistius'' and ''Heptathela''. In 1939,

Alexander Petrunkevitch Alexander Ivanovitch Petrunkevitch (; December 22, 1875 – March 9, 1964) was a Russian arachnologist. From 1910 to 1939, he described over 130 spider species. One of his most famous essays was "The Spider and the Wasp." In it he uses effective ...

raised the tribe Heptatheleae to a separate family, Heptathelidae, thus restoring the narrower circumscription of the Liphistiidae. In 1985,

Robert Raven Robert John Raven is an Australian arachnologist, being the Head of Terrestrial Biodiversity and the Senior Curator (Arachnida) at the Queensland Museum. Dr Raven has described over 450 species of spider in Australia and elsewhere, and is spider ...

reunited the two families, a view supported by Breitling in 2022. Other authors have maintained two separate families, a position accepted by the

. ''Liphistius'', the sole genus in the narrowly circumscribed family Liphistiidae, is found mainly in Southeast Asia (Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Sumatra), with a few species found in China. The Heptathelidae are found further north: five genera in northern Vietnam and China and two genera in Japan and offshore islands (Okinawa, Ryukyu Islands).

Phylogeny

Molecular phylogenetic studies have repeatedly shown that the suborder Mesothelae is

monophyletic In biological cladistics for the classification of organisms, monophyly is the condition of a taxonomic grouping being a clade – that is, a grouping of organisms which meets these criteria: # the grouping contains its own most recent co ...

, at least as regards extant (living) species, with the two families forming separate

clade In biology, a clade (), also known as a Monophyly, monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that is composed of a common ancestor and all of its descendants. Clades are the fundamental unit of cladistics, a modern approach t ...

Genera

, the

accepted the narrow circumscription of the family ''Liphistiidae'', in which it contains only one genus: *'' Liphistius'' Schiödte, 1849 — Asia

Description

Members of the Liphistiidae share features with the other Mesothelae family, Heptathelidae. They are medium to large spiders. They have downward pointing, daggerlike

chelicerae The chelicerae () are the arthropod mouthparts, mouthparts of the subphylum Chelicerata, an arthropod group that includes arachnids, horseshoe crabs, and sea spiders. Commonly referred to as "jaws", chelicerae may be shaped as either articulated ...

. Like other members of the suborder Mesothelae, and unlike all other extant spiders, they have a segmented series of plates ( tergites) on the upper surface of all segments of the abdomen and their

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 ar ...

s are placed in the middle of the underside of the abdomen, rather than at the end. Their sternum (a plate on the underside of the

cephalothorax The cephalothorax, also called prosoma in some groups, is a tagma of various arthropods, comprising the head and the thorax fused together, as distinct from the abdomen behind. (The terms ''prosoma'' and ''opisthosoma'' are equivalent to ''cepha ...

) is narrow, and there is another smaller ventral plate (the sternite) between the fourth pair of legs. The

carapace A carapace is a dorsal (upper) section of the exoskeleton or shell in a number of animal groups, including arthropods, such as crustaceans and arachnids, as well as vertebrates, such as turtles and tortoises. In turtles and tortoises, the unde ...

is mostly flat, though it can be slightly elevated near the head. The

eyes An eye is a sensory organ that allows an organism to perceive visual information. It detects light and converts it into electro-chemical impulses in neurons (neurones). It is part of an organism's visual system. In higher organisms, the ey ...

are distinctly clustered together on a single nodule. The anterior median eyes are small, but the posterior median eyes are large and round. The lateral eyes are long and kidney-shaped. The distal leg segments have strong spines and three claws. The respiratory system consists only of

book lung A book lung is a type of respiration organ used for atmospheric gas-exchange that is present in many arachnids, such as scorpions and spiders. Each of these organs is located inside an open, ventral-abdominal, air-filled cavity (atrium) and co ...

s, which could help explain why they are relatively inactive. Unlike heptathelids, the male palp has a tibial apophysis. In the past, they were frequently believed to lack venom, but in 2010 it was shown that at least some '' Liphistius'' species have venom glands. Liphistiids are tube-dwelling spiders that construct rudimentary trap-doors. They spend most of their time in their tubes and are rarely seen above ground. They are active at night and live for many years. Unlike members of the family Heptathelidae, Liphistiidae spiders construct signal lines radiating from the entrance to their burrows. Adult males sometimes wander in search for females, but females rarely leave their burrows.

Fossil record

While some

Carboniferous The Carboniferous ( ) is a Geologic time scale, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), system of the Paleozoic era (geology), era that spans 60 million years, from the end of the Devonian Period Ma (million years ago) to the beginning of the ...

fossil spiders have been assigned to

, the only fossil to be explicitly placed in the family Liphistiidae is ''Cretaceothele lata'' Wunderlich, 2015 from the Cretaceous Burmese amber of

Myanmar Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and has ...

. The fossil genus was diagnosed as having an eye-field wider than that in living species. It was later placed in its own, monotypic family Cretaceothelidae.

References

External links

ARKive
{{Taxonbar, from=Q10593 Spider families Spiders of Asia