Family NEPHILIDAE Simon, 1894

Nephila plumipes

© Copyright Commonwealth of Australia

Museums

Regional Maps

• Nephilidae Simon, E. 1894. Histoire naturelle des araignées. Paris Vol. 1 pp. 489-760 [744] (as Nephileae).

Introduction

This group has only recently been raised to family level status (Kuntner 2006) and was previously placed as a subfamily of the family Tetragnathidae. Nephilidae includes some of Australia's biggest spiders, the Golden Orb Weavers (genus Nephila), which are found across the continent; the less common Coin Spiders (Herennia) and Hermit Spiders (Nephilengys), are found only in northern Australia. Two other genera with Australian distributions that were previously included in Nephilinae, leaf curling spiders (Phonognatha) and the nocturnal Deliochus, are now placed in the Araneidae (Kuntner, Coddington & Hormiga 2008).

Diagnosis References

Kuntner, M. 2005. A revision of Herennia (Araneae: Nephilidae: Nephilinae), the Australasian 'coin spiders'. Invertebrate Systematics 19: 391-436

General References

Harvey, M.S., Austin, A.D. & Adams, M. 2007. The systematics and biology of the spider genus Nephila (Araneae: Nephilidae) in the Australian Region). Invertebrate Systematics 21: 407-451

Kuntner, M. 2005. A revision of Herennia (Araneae: Nephilidae: Nephilinae), the Australasian 'coin spiders'. Invertebrate Systematics 19: 391-436

Kuntner, M. 2006. Phylogenetic systematics of the Gondwanan nephilid spider lineage Clitaetrinae (Araneae, Nephilidae). Zoologica Scripta 35: 19-62

Kuntner, M. 2007. A monograph of Nephilengys, the pantropical 'hermit spiders' (Araneae, Nephilidae, Nephilinae). Systematic Entomology 32: 95-135

Kuntner, M., Coddington J.A. & Hormiga, G. 2008. Phylogeny of extant nephilid orb-weaving spiders (Araneae, Nephilidae): testing morphological and ethological homologies. Cladistics 24: 147-217