Running Crab Spiders
Lat. “Philodromidae“
family
of suborder
“Typical Spiders“
1 family, 1 complex, 2 species
Philodromidae is a family of spiders commonly known as philodromid crab spiders or running crab spiders. This family is superficially similar to the “true” crab spiders in the family Thomisidae.
Hierarchy
Description
Philodromids have a crab-like shape due to the first two pairs of legs being oriented sideways (laterigrade). This is superficially similar to the “true” crab spiders (Thomisidae), such as Misumena vatia, but these families are not as closely related as previously thought. Unlike crab spiders, the legs are generally similar in size, though the second leg pair may be significantly longer than the first pair. This is most evident in Ebo, where the second pair of legs are twice as long as the first pair in some species. Philodromids have scopula only at the tips of the tarsi (unlike sparassids) and the eyes are in two curved rows with the posterior row wider than the anterior row. In terms of colouration, they are usually cream to light brown and have faint longitudinal stripes.
Ecology
Philodromidae are active predators and often occur on the stems and leaves of plants. Some occur only on deciduous trees and others only on conifers. A small number of species live in deserts. Instead of building webs to catch prey, they hunt by ambush.
Genera
As of April 2019, the World Spider Catalog accepts the following genera:
See also
List of Philodromidae species
External links
Platnick, N.I. 2003. World Spider Catalog Picture of a philodromid Identification of European genera and species
Ancestry Graph
Further Information
Copyright
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Philodromidae the free encyclopedia Wikipedia which is released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License). On Wikipedia a list of authors is available.