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Pholcus

Pholcus is a large genus of spiders of long-bodied cellar spider and allies in the family Pholcidae.

It includes the cellar spider P. phalangioides, often called the "daddy longlegs". This may cause confusion because the name "daddy longlegs" is also applied to two other unrelated arthropods: the harvestman and the crane fly.

Description

Pholcus, like Pholcidae in general, have extremely long and thin legs. The genus can be distinguished from other pholcid genera by its large size (body length >4 mm), eight eyes, evenly domed prosoma (lacking a median furrow or pit) and cylindrical opisthosoma (longer than it is high).

Habitat

In the wild, Pholcus live in environments such as caves, under rocks, forest shrubs and deep limestone cracks. Synanthropic species such as P. phalangioides live in and around buildings and other disturbed habitats.

Species

, this genus includes 432 species.

These species have pages on Wikipedia:

Identification resources

  • Pholcus of Europe: https://araneae.nmbe.ch/specieskey/263/Pholcus
  • Pholcus of North America: https://bugguide.net/node/view/9609

References

External links