Family LYCOSIDAE Sundevall, 1833

Lycosidae, or Wolf Spider

© Copyright Curtis Morton

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Introduction

The wolf spiders are small to large, 3-clawed, ground-living, hunting spiders. Eyes 4.2.2. Trochanters notched. Colulus absent. Male palp without tibial apophysis. Leg IV longest. Female lycosids carry the egg sac attached to the spinnerets and the young, after hatching, climb on the back of the female. Lycosids are found in a very wide range of habitats — under logs and stones, in litter, in grasslands, sand-dunes, beaches, on salt-lakes and claypans. Some do not construct retreats, others have simple or complex burrows with turrets of stones and twigs, leaf palisades or well-hinged trap-doors. Venonia Thorell, and probably Anomalosa Roewer, build small, horizontal sheet webs on the ground.

With a long history of species descriptions, many Australian wolf spiders have been misplaced in genera that may not actually occur in Australia. Ongoing revisions of the Australasian fauna are resulting in the disappearance of such names from the faunal list as species are transferred. Anoteropsis L. Koch is now known to be endemic to New Zealand (Vink, 2002); see Mainosa Framenau for the species previously listed under Anoteropsis. Trabea australiensis L. Koch, 1877 was considered nomen dubium by Framenau (2002:211), all other species of the genus occur in Africa and southern Europe. Australian species that have previously been listed under Schizocosa Chamberlin (or Avicosa Chamberlin & Ivie, in synonymy under Schizocosa) are now listed under Artoria Thorell and Artoriopsis Framenau (see Framenau, 2005, 2007).

Diagnosis

Lycosidae are typically ground hunters but also build nests in low bushes. They have 3 claws, the eyes are in 2 or 3 rows with the eyes of the front row smaller than those of the back; the back row may be so strongly curved back as to form a third row, the retrocoxal hymen is present and a predistal tarsal fracture is absent, and trochanters all deeply notched.

General References

Framenau, V.W. 2002. Review of the wolf spider genus Artoria Thorell (Araneae: Lycosidae). Invertebrate Systematics 16: 209-235

Framenau, V.W. 2005. The wolf spider genus Artoria Thorell in Australia: new synonymies and generic transfers (Araneae, Lycosidae). Records of the Western Australian Museum 22: 265-292

Framenau, V.W. 2007. Revision of the new Australian genus Artoriopsis in a new subfamily of wolf spiders, Artoriinae (Araneae: Lycosidae). Zootaxa 1391: 1-34

Vink, C.J. 2002. Fauna of New Zealand. Number 44. Lycosidae (Arachnida: Araneae). Lincoln (New Zealand). : Manaaki Whenua Press