The family Deinopidae, are also commonly known as net casting spiders — a family of cribellate spiders that were first described by Carl Ludwig Koch in 1850.
Cribellate silk Sheet web building spiders, like the common black house or window spiders, make their webs with this sort of catching silk (sheet or shawl webs), as do the net casting spiders and their relatives. Cribellate silk is produced from many tiny, silk glands placed beneath a specialised, flattened spinning organ called the cribellum. The cribellum is placed in front of the spinnerets and is derived from spinnerets (the anterior median spinnerets) present in ancestral araneomorphs. Its surface is covered by hundreds or thousands of tiny, elongate spigots, each producing a single fibril of cribellate silk about 0.00001 mm thick. All of these spigots act together to produce a single cribellate thread made up of thousands of the silk fibrils. They are supported on thicker lines produced by spigots on the posterior and median spinnerets. A web made with a meshwork of these composite ‘wool-like’ threads is particularly effective at tangling the bristles, spines and claws of insect prey. The fine fibrils of cribellate silk also appear to have some type of ‘dry adhesive’ properties (possibly electrostatic in nature) and will even cling to smooth beetle cuticle.3
Source: Australian Museum
There are three described genera within the family Deinopidae:
- Asianopis Lin & Li, 2020 – Asia
- Deinopis Macleay, 1839 – Every continent, except Europe and Antarctica
- Menneus Simon, 1876 – Africa, Australia
Source: World Spider Catalog, Wikipedia4
Asianopis is a genus of Asian net-casting spiders, first described by Y. J. Lin, L. Shao and A. Hänggi in 2020. This saw the species Deinopis subrufa moved to the genus Asianopis and the species re-classified as Asianopis subrufa.
Another species that has been re-classified is Asianopis ravida (formerly Deinopis ravida).
- Scientific classification
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Arthropoda
- Subphylum: Chelicerata
- Class: Arachnida
- Order: Araneae
- Suborder: Araneomorphae
- Infraorder: Entelegynae
- Superfamily: Uloboroidea
- Family: Deinopidae
- Genus:
- Asianopis (Asian Ogre-faced Spiders)
- Deinopis (Ogre-faced Spiders)
- Menneus (Hump-back Spiders)
Footnote & References
- Photos Ogre-faced Net-casting Spider (genus Deinopis) © Stefan Jones
- Photos Net-casting Spider (Deinopis subrufa) © Michael Doe
- Silk: the spider’s success story, Australian Museum, https://australian.museum/learn/animals/spiders/silk-the-spiders-success-story/
- Deinopidae, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinopidae
- Cribellate vs Ecribellate Silk, Hebets Lab, https://hebetslab.unl.edu/portfolio-posts/cribellate-vs-ecribellate-silk/
- Cribellate Spiders, and Some More Thoughts on that Mysterious Thing from Peru, by Charley Eiseman, 9 September 2013, BugTracks, https://bugtracks.wordpress.com/2013/09/09/cribellate-spiders-and-some-more-thoughts-on-that-mysterious-thing-from-peru/
SpidersIndex of Spider Images Spiders in Australia Araneidae — Orb Weavers Arkys Australian Huntsman Spider Barking Spider Black House Spider Carepalxis sp Celaenia sp Crab Spiders Deinopidae — Net-casting Spiders Dolomedes sp Dolophones sp Flower Spiders Hackled Orbweavers (Uloboridae) Jewel Spider Jumping Spider Long Jawed Spider (Tetragnatha sp) Lynx Spider (Oxyopes) Mangrovia albida Maratus volans Missulena occatoria (Red-headed Mouse Spider) Miturgidae Nicodamidae (Red and Black Spider) Ogre-faced Net-casting Spider Poltys sp (Twig Spider) Redback Spider Scorpion-tailed Spider (Arachnura higginsi) Thomisidae Tiger Spider (Trichonephila plumipes) White-spotted Swift Spider (Nyssus albopunctatus) Wolf Spider