Philoponella

Philoponella
	female P. prominens from Okinawa
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Subphylum:	Chelicerata
Class:	Arachnida
Order:	Araneae
Infraorder:	Araneomorphae
Family:	Uloboridae
Genus:	Philoponella; Mello-Leitão, 1917
Species
	See text
Diversity
	43 species

Philoponella is a genus of uloborid spiders. Like all Uloboridae, these species have no venom.

Cooperation

Some species (among them P. congregabilis and P. oweni) construct communal webs^{[broken anchor]}, but nevertheless do not capture prey cooperatively. However, a few species, such as P. raffrayi, are known to cooperate in prey capture. A colony of P. raffrayi is composed of individual orb-webs connected by non-adhesive silk. Its average body length is about 6 mm in females and 3 mm in males. Adult females are orange for at least a week after the final molt, and become black a few weeks later. In these colonies, Argyrodes and Portia species can also be found, acting as kleptoparasites and predators, respectively. When relatively large prey is trapped on the periphery of the colony, two females cooperate in about 10% of cases in wrapping it, which increases their chances of success about fourfold. However, only one female then feeds on this prey. Cooperative capture is similar in P. republicana, where more than two individuals may work together.^[1]

Philoponella vicina uses its silk to compress and crush its prey.^[2]

Distribution

Philoponella species occur pantropical in the Americas, Africa, southeastern Asia and Australia, with almost half of them found from the southern United States to northern Argentina.

Species

As of 2024^[update], it contains 43 species:

Philoponella alata (Lin & Li, 2008) — China
Philoponella angolensis (Lessert, 1933) — Ivory Coast, Angola, South Africa
Philoponella arizonica (Gertsch, 1936) — USA, Mexico
Philoponella bella Opell, 1979 — Colombia
Philoponella collina (Keyserling, 1883) — Peru
Philoponella congregabilis (Rainbow, 1916) — Australia. Introduced to New Zealand
Philoponella cymbiformis Xie et al., 1997 — China
Philoponella divisa Opell, 1979 — Colombia, Brazil
Philoponella duopunctata Faleiro & Santos, 2014 — Brazil
Philoponella fasciata (Mello-Leitão, 1917) — Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina
Philoponella feroka (Bradoo, 1979) — India^[3]
Philoponella fluviidulcifis (Faleiro & Santos, 2014) — Brazil
Philoponella gibberosa (Kulczynski, 1908) — Java
Philoponella herediae Opell, 1987 — Costa Rica
Philoponella hilaris (Simon, 1906) — India
Philoponella lingulata Dong, Zhu & Yoshida, 2005 — China
Philoponella lunaris (C. L. Koch, 1839) — Brazil
Philoponella mollis (Thorell, 1895) — Myanmar
Philoponella nasuta (Thorell, 1895) — China, Myanmar
Philoponella nigromaculata Yoshida, 1992 — Taiwan
Philoponella opelli (Faleiro & Santos, 2014) — Ecuador, Brazil
Philoponella operosa (Simon, 1896) — South Africa
Philoponella oweni (Chamberlin, 1924) — USA, Mexico
Philoponella pantherina (Keyserling, 1890) — Australia (New South Wales)
Philoponella para Opell, 1979 — Paraguay, Argentina
Philoponella pisiformis Dong, Zhu & Yoshida, 2005 — China
Philoponella pomelita Grismado, 2004 — Argentina
Philoponella prominens (Bösenberg & Strand, 1906) — China, Korea, Taiwan, Japan
Philoponella quadrituberculata (Thorell, 1893) — Java, Moluccas
Philoponella raffrayi (Simon, 1891) — Java, Moluccas
Philoponella ramirezi Grismado, 2004 — Brazil
Philoponella republicana (Simon, 1891) — Panama to Bolivia
Philoponella rostralis (Shilpa & Sudhikumar, 2022) — India
Philoponella sabah Yoshida, 1992 — Borneo
Philoponella semiplumosa (Simon, 1893) — USA, Greater Antilles to Venezuela
Philoponella signatella (Roewer, 1951) — Mexico to Honduras
Philoponella subvittata Opell, 1981 — Guyana
Philoponella tingens (Chamberlin & Ivie, 1936) — Mexico to Colombia
Philoponella truncata (Thorell, 1895) — Myanmar, Java
Philoponella variabilis (Keyserling, 1887) — Australia (Queensland, New South Wales)
Philoponella vicina (O. P.-Cambridge, 1899) — Mexico to Costa Rica
Philoponella vittata (Keyserling, 1881) — Panama to Paraguay
Philoponella wuyiensis Xie et al., 1997 — China

Footnotes

^ Matsumoto 1998
^ Eberhard, William G.; Barrantes, Gilbert & Weng, Ju-Lin (2006). "Tie them up tight: wrapping by Philoponella vicina spiders breaks, compresses and sometimes kills their prey". Naturwissenschaften 95(5): 251-254. doi:10.1007/s00114-006-0094-1 — HTML abstract
^ Babu, Nishi; Caleb, John T.D.; Jani, Maitry; Uma, Divya; Prasad, G. (2022). "On the taxonomy and distribution of the orb-weaving spider Philoponella feroka(Bradoo, 1979) n. comb. from India (Araneae, Uloboridae)". Zootaxa. 5087 (3): 497–500. doi:10.11646/zootaxa.5087.3.8. PMID 35391274. S2CID 248025552.

References

Tamerlan Thorell (1895). Descriptive catalogue of the spiders of Burma
Opell, B.D. (1987). "The new species Philoponella herediae and its modified orb-web (Araneae, Uloboridae)". J. Arachnol. 15: 59-63. PDF
Matsumoto, Toshiya (1998). "Cooperative prey capture in the communal web spider, Philoponella raffray (Araneae, Uloboridae)". Journal of Arachnology 26: 392-396. PDF
Grismado, Christian J. (2004). "Two new species of the genus Philoponella from Brazil and Argentina (Araneae, Uloboridae)". Iheringia, Sér. Zool. 94(1): 105-109. PDF
Platnick, Norman I. (2008). The world spider catalog, version 8.5. American Museum of Natural History.

[1] Matsumoto 1998

[2] Eberhard, William G.; Barrantes, Gilbert & Weng, Ju-Lin (2006). "Tie them up tight: wrapping by Philoponella vicina spiders breaks, compresses and sometimes kills their prey". Naturwissenschaften 95(5): 251-254. doi:10.1007/s00114-006-0094-1 — HTML abstract

[zootaxa-3] Babu, Nishi; Caleb, John T.D.; Jani, Maitry; Uma, Divya; Prasad, G. (2022). "On the taxonomy and distribution of the orb-weaving spider Philoponella feroka(Bradoo, 1979) n. comb. from India (Araneae, Uloboridae)". Zootaxa. 5087 (3): 497–500. doi:10.11646/zootaxa.5087.3.8. PMID 35391274. S2CID 248025552.

[1]

[2]

[3]