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.

Using number of iNat observations as a guide, if you can rule out Pardosinae (thinner legs usually), your wolf spider is probably Lycosinae. Subfamily Allocosinae 3,971 Subfamily Artoriinae 5,964 Subfamily Evippinae 2,638 Subfamily Hippasinae 3,436 Subfamily Lycosinae 265,686 S…

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 goog…

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 differen…

[image] ursaw: That’s the way I research stuff I’m interested in. 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 s…

So is there any good way for me (absolutely not a taxonomist) to know what falls under lycosinae, and what doesn’t?

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 …

[image] spiderthumbs: So is there any good way for me (absolutely not a taxonomist) to know what falls under lycosinae, and what doesn’t? 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 t…

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. …

[image] spiderthumbs: I’m only familiar with the term true spiders Now I’m curious about false spiders…

I guess harvestmen could be considered false spiders?

What even is Lycosinae?

Nature Talk

egordon88 September 8, 2025, 3:07am 8

Using number of iNat observations as a guide, if you can rule out Pardosinae (thinner legs usually), your wolf spider is probably Lycosinae.

Subfamily Allocosinae

3,971
Subfamily Artoriinae

5,964
Subfamily Evippinae

2,638
Subfamily Hippasinae

3,436
Subfamily Lycosinae

265,686
Subfamily Pardosinae

124,109
Subfamily Sosippinae

6,376
Subfamily Tricassinae

10,990
Subfamily Venoniinae

1,417
Subfamily Zoicinae

7,907

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What even is Lycosinae?

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