The Zodaraiid groundspiders, family Zodaraiidae, are a family of small to medium-sized spiders.
The spiders live in association with a nest of ants of their prey species, and use their mimicry to enter and leave the nest unmolested (if the ants detected them as intruders they would mass to repel and perhaps kill them).
The spiders walk on only the three rear pairs of legs, and if they encounter an ant during their forays into the nest territory, they touch their front legs to the ant's antennae in the same way as another ant would with its own antennae.
These spiders resemble the Solifugae ("wind scorpions" or "sun scorpions") in having segmented plates on their abdomens that create the appearance of the segmented abdomens of these other arachnids.
The spiders that are called "tarantulas" in English are so large and hairy that inspection of their chelicerae is hardly necessary to categorize one of them as a Mygalomorph.
Spiders in this infraorder are characterized by the vertical orientation of their chelicerae and the possession of four book lungs.
The AntSpiders or Zodariidae have a Gondwanan distribution and are found in all tropical and subtropical regions.
The spiders are three-clawed, entelegyne, small to large sized (2-20mm) and can easily be identified by the absence of a serrula, the 3rd claw on the onychium, and the medio-lateral inserted teeth on the two main claws.
Zodariidae are abundant ground-living spiders in Australia, often recognised by their attractive, bright yellow or orange spots against a dark brown abdomen, and by their annulated legs.
Zodariid ground spider - Cleverpedia, the ultimate encyclopedia(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13)
Ant hunters should not be confounded also with antspiders, the ants copy (mimicry) and not are related to them.
The spiders live in the proximity of a ant nest and use its ant-similar behaviors, in order to go in the nest undisturbed in and out.
The spiders go only on the three front pairs of legs; if they meet a ant, they affect these with their Vorderbeinen, as this would do a ant with its antennas.
Social spiders are hypothesized to have evolved via this "sub-social" route, by means of further delaying dispersal and by extending the period of brood feeding and co-opera-tion typical of juvenile stages of the sub-social species.
Spiders from known families were raised to adulthood and mated with either a sib (inbred treatment) or a non-sib (outbred treatment).
The basic objectives of this study were to analyse the effects of single and repeated fires on spider diversity and on spider communities and to describe the ecological response of forest floor habitats to wildfires in the chestnut forests in southern Switzerland, using epigeic spider as bioindicators.
Clark, W.H. "Predation on the harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex tenuispina Forel (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), by the spider, Steatoda fulva (Keyserling) (Araneae: Theridiidae) in Baja California sur, Mexico." Southwest.
"Effects of ants, ground beetles and the seed-fall patterns on myrmecochory of Erythronium japonicum Decne.
"Groundant fauna in a Bornean dipterocarp forest." Raffles Bull.
A total of 310 species and one subspecies (Uloborus undulatus indicus Kulczyński, 1908) of spiders are now recorded for
However, there was a difference between the species of birds caught in the canopy mist-nets and those species either seen during the study or commonly caught in conventional mist-nets on the ground.
These results suggest that canopy mist-nets deployed on canopy walkways are a useful additional tool in avifauna surveys because they detect species commonly missed by other techniques.
