Alice Springs Fauna •
Alice Springs Spiders > Alice Springs Spider Index
Australia has eight species of Mouse Spider, with two found in the Northern Territory, the Northern Mouse Spider (Missulena pruinosa) and the Red-headed Mouse Spider (Missulena occatoria).
The male Red-headed Mouse Spider (Missulena occatoria) is distinctive with its bright red head and chelicerae (a pair of appendages in front of the mouth), and a gun-metal to royal blue coloured abdomen.
The female Red-headed Mouse Spiders are much larger than the males and are stout spiders with short legs. The female tend to be uniformly dark brown to black in colour all over, however their jaws can sometimes be red-tinged.
The Red-headed Mouse Spider has a smooth, glossy carapace (the dorsal section of the exoskeleton), with a head area that is high, steep and broad and with large, bulbous jaws. Their eyes are widespread across the front of their head.
A spider’s body is in two sections. The head and thorax, bearing the eyes, mouthparts and legs, are fused together to form the cephalothorax.
Source: Australian Musuem1
The cephalothorax is covered above by a hard cuticular plate called the carapace – much like the hard ‘shell’ covering a crab.
The Red-headed Mouse Spider spinnerets (the silk producing organ) are short and blunt, located at the back of the abdomen. The male have thinner and longer legs without mating spurs.
- Scientific classification
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Arthropoda
- Subphylum: Chelicerata
- Class: Arachnida
- Order: Araneae
- Infraorder: Mygalomorphae
- Family: Actinopodidae
- Genus: Missulena
- Species: Missulena occatoria
Footnote & References
- What is a spider?, Australian Museum, https://australian.museum/learn/species-identification/ask-an-expert/what-is-a-spiders/
- Mouse Spiders, Nature Notes, Parks resources for schools – Invertebrates, https://nt.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0002/200000/mouse-spiders.pdf
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