(north of Mexico)
For lists of other Arachnid Orders link here.
Introduction
This page is an initial attempt to provide a list of valid names for the spiders (Araneae) which occur in North America north of Mexico. The list has been compiled by a committee of volunteer contributors of the American Arachnological Society (Spiders of North America Check-list Committee). As a version of each family list becomes available at this site its name will be highlighted; indicating a link to the draft list. The committee is most interested in receiving suggestions or corrections. Please direct these questions to Richard Bradley (bradley.10@osu.edu).
The following list of families is adapted from the list provided in Norman Platnick's "Advances in Spider Taxonomy 1992-1995." Users should be aware that a revised version of this work is available on the Internet. The main purpose of a page such as the current one is to provide information on the names currently in use in the most convenient form; thus the list of families is presented in alphabetic order. The sole exception to this is that the mygalomorph and araneomorph families are grouped in two separate alphabetic lists.
Hints for the use of this webpage:
To find a particular name you should first select the family to which you believe the spider belongs and scan the list for the "candidate" name you are checking. If you do not find the name quickly; use the "find-in-page" or Find (on-this-page) function (under the Edit pulldown menu with Netscape or Internet Explorer) searching for the species' name. Try a search without the name's ending as this might change with the name of the older generic assignment. For example, Acanthepeira venusta (Banks, 1896) was at one time listed as Araneus venustus. If you search under "venust" you would locate both names. In this way you may locate "synonyms" for the name. Most contributors have included common synonyms in their lists under the current accepted name.
Another issue that may confound your efforts to find a current name is that some spider species have been shifted to different families because of newly recognized relationships among the genera. In such cases you might need to search several families to locate the name in question. Prominent examples are the re-arrangement of genera often listed in older publications as Agelenidae. Cicurina has been moved to Dictynidae, Coras and Wadotes to Amaurobiidae etc. For the Clubionidae, some genera are now placed in Liocranidae, Corinnidae or Miturgidae.
In all cases it will be helpful to remember to use the "back" button on your browser to return to the main list after searching a particular family list. You should expect that, depending upon your system, there will be a delay while loading the larger family lists (e.g. Araneidae, Linyphiidae, Salticidae).
If you are working from one of the older (but still very useful) texts, you should consult the list at the bottom to see if there is a "translation list" provided for that book.
If the family name (link) below is followed by (list only) it indicates that a simple list of species is present but no information about distribution has been included. It is hoped that these lists will be updated to include full information soon. These raw lists were derived from the information provided in Norman Platnick's "Advances in Spider Taxonomy 1992-1995."
Mygalomorphae
Araneomorphae
Translation list for B.J. Kaston's "Spiders of Connecticut."
Translation list for J. Emerton's "Common Spiders of the United States."
Translation list for B.J. Kaston's "How to Know the Spiders."
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