![]() ![]() When hunting, ground spiders produce thick, gluey silk from their enlarged spinnerets and attempt to use it to entangle their prey in swathing attacks, often applying their webbing to their prey's legs and mouths. ![]() They are adapted to hunting large and potentially dangerous prey, including other spiders, which they subdue by using their silk. Ground spiders hunt by active foraging, chasing down and subduing individual prey items. The thick-walled egg sacs are guarded by the mother until the spiderlings hatch. The genitalia are diverse and are a good model for studying the evolution of genitalia because of their peculiar copulatory mechanism. They hunt at night and spend the day in a silken retreat. ![]() All ground spiders lack a prey-capture web and generally run prey down on the surface. Another characteristic is an indentation in the endites (paired mouthparts anterior and lateral to the labium, or lip). The main exception to this rule is found in the ant-mimicking genus Micaria. Generally, ground spiders are characterized by having barrel-shaped anterior spinnerets that are one spinneret diameter apart. At present, no ground spiders are known to be seriously venomous to humans. There are 105 species known to central Europe, and common genera include Gnaphosa, Drassodes, Micaria, Cesonia, Zelotes and many others. Ground spiders comprise Gnaphosidae, the seventh largest spider family with over 2,000 described species in over 100 genera distributed worldwide. Callilepis nocturna, a ground spider found in the Palearctic realm ![]()
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