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Harpactea

Harpactea is a genus in the family Dysderidae (woodlouse hunting spiders). Harpactea is a replacement name published by W. S. Bristowe in 1939 for the unavailable name "Harpactes" published by R. Templeton in 1835, which had already been used for a genus of birds. They are non-web building predators that forage on the ground and on tree trunks at night, mainly in forests. During the day, they hide in silk retreats they build under rocks or bark.

Harpactea sadistica was found to use traumatic insemination, the arthropod behavior of directly inserting its sperm into the body cavity of females. It is the first time it has ever been observed in spiders.

Description

Like all woodlouse hunters, Harpactea have six eyes. The type species, H. hombergi, can grow up to a body length of . Males and females are similar, but the female has no epigyne.

Like the rest of their family, they are nocturnal. Unlike them, Harpactea do not specialize on hunting woodlice. H. rubicunda also hunts Drassodes and other spiders, but most Harpactea feed on insects in addition to woodlice.

Taxonomy

In 1835, the name "Harpactes" was published by R. Templeton for a taxon split off from the related genus Dysdera. Subsequent authors used this genus name for many years, but when published, Harpactes had already been used for a bird genus, so it was not available. Accordingly, in 1939, W. S. Bristowe published the replacement name Harpactea. The type species is Dysdera latreillei, synonym "Harpactes" latreillei, now accepted as a synonym of Harpactea hombergi.

Templeton did not explain his choice of genus name, but Greek , , means 'snatcher', 'plunderer', 'pillager' or 'thief'.

Species

Almost all species of this genus appear to be endemic to small regions of the Mediterranean. , the World Spider Catalog accepted 213 species from Europe and Northern Africa to Turkmenistan and Iran:

References

Further reading

External links