What defines “Typical Wolf Spiders”?
And I’m also curious as to what “Typical Orbweavers” and “Typical spiders means” The only result I get from Google is the AI response, and I don’t trust it on this subject.
Please tag people you think could help.
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I’m not an expert on spiders, but as a senior Google user, I’d suggest avoiding questions like “what is typical spiders”, and instead searching for the available materials regarding spiders and reading through them yourself.
“Typical spiders” you’re talking about are Araneomorphae, right? Just google Araneomorphae and read up on what they’re all about. They have their own Wikipedia page which also shows the difference between them and the other spiders.
The most easily noticeable feature for the amateur observer is the fang orientation. In Araneomorphae the fangs are pointed towards one another, kind of like when you make a circle using your index finger and your thumb. In their sister infraorder Mygalomorphae the fangs point directly downwards. There’s also a third suborder of spiders called Mesothelae (segmented spiders) – based on my limited understanding, they’re the least modern of the bunch, retaining more of the characteristics common in ancient spider fossils (spinnerets in the middle of the abdomen, segmented plates, some other stuff you can find on their Wiki page and in other available materials).
The majority of modern spiders belong to the infraorder Araneomorphae (which is honestly understandable, their fang placement is super convenient!), so it’s a given that they would be considered “typical”.
That’s the way I research stuff I’m interested in. I google the specific genera, read what their defining characteristics are, and then go up the taxonomic tree. If I’m interested in Araneomorphae, my next stop would be at Opisthothelae, and all the different things that belong to that suborder. And then up, and then up, until I’m satisfied with the conclusions I manage to come to ദ്ദി ( ᵔ ᗜ ᵔ )
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Oh, I’m only familiar with the term true spiders, I didn’t realize that it held the same meaning as typical spiders.
More broadly, all of these groups are intended to be clades, meaning groups of organisms that are defined by being all descendants from a particular common ancestor.
In practice clades are defined by figuring out how things are related to each other on a phylogeny (a family tree connecting different populations of organisms) and then choosing a node (place where branches come together on that family tree) and saying, “Every branch, twig and leaf descended from this node is a member of the clade.” In a simple conception (in which the tree only branches and never rejoins over time and we know how everything is related) every node can be used to define a clade, but there are so many nodes (millions of them) that we only have names for the ones that seem relevant to some taxonomist. So Lycosinae is a clade defined by a node within the spider family tree. There are of course morphological and genetic characteristics used to ID Lycosinae, but a member of the clade that lacked those characteristics would still be considered Lycosinae.
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I really appreciate your description of your process! I think on the forum here we usually either describe specific groups and how to ID them, or more abstract definitions (like my comment above) but I really like when people share how they learn.
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So is there any good way for me (absolutely not a taxonomist) to know what falls under lycosinae, and what doesn’t?
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Something I think most people don’t realise - “typical” when used in common names like this doesn’t have the same meaning as its everyday usage. Generally we think of typical as meaning “normal” or “standard” or “representative”. In these cases though the word comes from its taxonomic meaning, so it has to do with types. The type genus for a family is the genus that the family was originally based on and that it takes its name from - so for example the type genus of Lycosidae is Lycosa. This does not say anything about how representative of the entire family it is, and there is nothing preventing it from being highly divergent when compared to other genera. For example, the genus Phalanger, the cuscuses (arborial rainforest possums), is the type genus for the superfamily Phalangeroidea even though that superfamily contains much more well-known animals like kangaroos, koalas, and sugar gliders.
So when we say Lycosinae are ‘Typical Wolf Spiders’ we mean that they are related to the type genus. Lycosinae by definition must include Lycosa, so Lycosinae will always be ‘Typical Wolf Spiders’ no matter what species it actually contains. It works for other taxonomic levels as well - Lycosidae as a whole are ‘Typical Lycosoidea’, and the tribe Lycosini are ‘Typical Lycosinae’. The meaning does have some overlap though, because Lycosini is also typical of Lycosidae and Lycosoidea. And the genus Lycosa itself is a ‘Typical Lycosini’, ‘Typical Lycosinae’, ‘Typical Lycosidae’, and ‘Typical Lycosoidea’. So the name in itself has no real bearing on what the species that it contains will be like!
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Using number of iNat observations as a guide, if you can rule out Pardosinae (thinner legs usually), your wolf spider is probably Lycosinae.
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Absolutely! You can use the process @ursaw describes to learn what the diagnostic characteristics of the clade are. The reason clades are a useful way to think about biodiversity is that organisms that share ancestors also tend to share characteristics that those ancestors had and other organisms didn’t, and don’t. Presumably, the most recent common ancestor of all the Lycosinae had the “male pedipalps bearing a transverse tegular apophysis carrying a ventrally directed spur and a sinuous channel on its dorsal surface (Framenau 2006).”
Another way to “know what falls under lycosinae” is to search for Lycosinae on the explore page:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=1235357&view=species
which yields (currently) 294 species globally. Note that this will only include the species that have been observed and IDed on iNat.
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My - not so erudite use of iNat.
I ID as best I can, follow my notifications from kind and helpful taxon specialists. Withdraw my wrong IDs, until they have taught me where my knowledge fits taxonomy. (That one is NotASpider …) I start with ‘most commonly observed’ and easy to ID from iNat photos.
None of my Cape Town obs are Lycosinae - so I have learnt another bit, thank you. But there are 3 here. And I have learnt what ‘typical’ means!
Now I’m curious about false spiders…
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I guess harvestmen could be considered false spiders?
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Yes! That is often how I refer to them
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