nick-porch:Red-and-Black Spiders - Kidding Right?Members of the spider family Nicodamidae are, like
nick-porch:Red-and-Black Spiders - Kidding Right?Members of the spider family Nicodamidae are, like the peacock spiders (previous post), a part of the charismatic and distinctive spider fauna of the Australian region. The are frequently encountered on the ground, in leaf litter and woody debris, or under the bark of eucalypt trees. In Australia where most of the world’s approximately 30 species are found the red-and-black spiders are divided in to a total of seven different genera. These are distributed across the wetter southern and eastern part of the the continent but nicodamids, especially the species Durodamus yeni, do occur in the arid zone of the continent. All seven Australian genera end in the suffix ‘damus’ taking the root from the first described genus of the family - Nicodamus - which, of course gives the family its name.Differentiating adult male and female spiders can be quite simple as these images nicely illustrate.The first three images all show the distinctive male palps (more correctly - pedipalps - the elaborate ball-like structures the spiders are so proudly carrying about), important in species recognition, and for the spiders, mating. Females (the last two images) clearly lack these elaborate and highly modified structures. What the females do have (but not visible in these images is the ‘lock’ which the male pedipalpal ‘key’ fits: this is the female epigyne, found on the underside of the female abdomen, its shape matching the structure of the male pedipalp to enable conspecific (same species) mating.These unidentified specimens were found this year during Deakin University’s School of Life and Environmental Sciences student field-trips exploring the biodiversity of the Grampians and Otways upland regions. If you want to find out more about Australian spiders you should get this lovely little recent book: A Guide to the Spiders of Australia by Framenau, Baehr and Zborowski. -- source link
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