Uloborus

Federfußspinne ( Uloborus plumipes )

The Federfußspinnen ( Uloborus ) form a species-rich genus of the family of cribellate ( Uloboridae ). They are essentially distributed in the tropics and subtropics and come in America and Europe with only a few species in the temperate zone before.

The chelicerae of cribellate Federfußspinnen are moderately robust, but they lack venom glands - a condition that is almost unknown in other spiders, and which presupposes that the spiral orb web of the chelicerae and sufficient alone to hunt the prey. The long front pair of legs is often bent. In many species the legs with tufts of hair are federiger provided. The abdomen often busy with humps and decorated with brush-like tufts of hair, often pale white, mottled, striped or plain black color variations occur. The eight individual eyes are small; Federfußspinnen have to rely mainly on their other senses.

Their relatively small networks with 10 to 18 centimeters in diameter weave the Federfußspinnen near the bottom in damp, shady places - on small shrubs and underbrush of dead branches, in hollowed-out tree stumps or rocks. The always identical horizontally arranged orb webs consist of ground threads, radii, dry auxiliary spiral ( scaffolding threads ) and the concentric spiral of fishing tentacles. They are built on the same principle the mostly vertical networks of orb-web spiders, without that they are related with this. They are composed of the same elements as the orb webs of orb-weaving spiders: ground threads, radii, dry auxiliary spiral ( skeleton ) and the concentric capture spiral. In addition to the different orientation of the prey spectrum and the tentacles differ considerably: While most web spiders are spiders ecribellate and produce threads with glue droplets consist the tentacles of Federfußspinnen from catching wool. Often, however, the network is made ​​very asymmetric, especially during the breeding season.

Uloborus walckenaerius

Uloborus walckenaerius Latreille 1806 is 3 to 4 mm ( males ) or 4-6 mm (females ) tall and has a dark gray front body ( prosoma ), who is busy with white hair, which can free some dark gray to black longitudinal bands. On the fluffy hairy hind body ( opisthosoma ), the pattern of Prosomas continues. The opisthosoma has no cusps. The sternum is black, legs dark gray-brown to reddish brown with indistinct white girdling. The first and second pair of legs is very long. U. walckenarius lives in warm, open sites like pagans, and moves close to the ground horizontally, bluish cribellate orb webs between heather and gorse bushes. The orb sometimes has a stable element. The spider lurks below the hub. The female hangs an elongated cocoon with 70 to 100 eggs on the edge of the network. In Germany, Austria and Switzerland it is only found in warm places. Further north it is missing. Uloborus walckenaerius is extinct in Baden- Württemberg, or lost, threatened with extinction in Brandenburg and Bavaria.

Uloborus plumipes

Uloborus plumipes Lucas 1846 has a hairy Prosoma without distinct longitudinal stripes. The opisthosoma has at the front of the side two distinct humps between which are two white spots. The opisthosoma is covered by dense coat with a darker median stripe. The legs of U. plumipes are medium brown haired with white- bluish girdling. The tibia of the first pair of legs of the female has eye-catching black feathery hair. The species is common in warm climates and spread into central and northern Europe in greenhouses. It was assumed a parthenogenetic ( unisexual ) reproduction of females in greenhouses. Probably this is only to be attributed to that the males are found much less frequently.

Swell

• Norman I. Platnick: World Spider Catalog The. Version 6.5. American Museum of Natural History, 2006.
• Willis John Gertsch: American Spiders. 2nd edition. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York 1979, ISBN 0-442-22649-7.
• Wolfgang Nentwig, Theo view, Daniel Gloor, Ambros Hänggi, Christian Kropf ( Eds.): Spiders of Europe. In 1991.