Segestriidae
Tube-dwelling spiders (Segestriidae) are a family of araneomorph spiders first described by Eugène Simon in 1893. It consists of five genera: two large and widespread, Segestria and Ariadna, and three smaller genera, Citharoceps, Gippsicola and Indoseges. They are haplogyne spiders, related to the Dysderidae and placed in clade or superfamily Dysderoidea.

Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez ( Lmbuga Commons )( Lmbuga Galipedia ) · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- tube-dwelling spiderPBDB
- Sits inside
- DysderoideaPBDB
- Life habit
- solitaryPBDB, for Arachnida
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arachnida
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Arachnida
Time the record covers
At least 93 million years on record.
The record covers at least 93.9 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 100.5 Mya to 0 Mya.
46 occurrences of Segestriidae on record, most of them in the Eocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
46 occurrences- Late Cretaceous13%
- Eocene76%
- Miocene4%
- Pliocene1%
- Pleistocene1%
- Holocene4%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
5 formations
- Florissant Formation3
- Dolgan Formation1
- Kheta Formation1
- Raritan Formation · Potomac Group1
- Bouldnor Formation · Solent Group1
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The named rock units Segestriidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 39 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Segestriidae and its relatives
EoceneWhere Segestriidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
3,206 taxa- Segestria10 sites
- Episinus longimanus8 sites
- Gesomyrmex hoernesi8 sites
- Lasaeola infulata8 sites
- Archaea paradoxa7 sites
- Balticoroma serafinorum7 sites
- Ctenobethylus goepperti7 sites
- Gorgopsina frenata7 sites
- Nylanderia pygmaea7 sites
- Prenolepis henschei7 sites
- Yantaromyrmex geinitzi7 sites
- Ablator triguttatus6 sites
- Araneae6 sites
- Formica flori6 sites
- Lasius schiefferdeckeri6 sites
- Pachycondyla succinea6 sites
- Plagiolepis klinsmanni6 sites
- Dolichoderus tertiarius5 sites
- Eocamponotus mengei5 sites
- Eomatachia latifrons5 sites
- Hypoponera atavia5 sites
- Orchestina baltica5 sites
- Segestria tomentosa5 sites
- Tetraponera simplex5 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 25 sites for Segestriidae, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
19 references- Fossil spiders (Araneae) of the superfamily Dysderoidea in Baltic and Dominican amber, with revised family diagnoses13
- Amber Spiders in European Collections5
- Descriptions of fossil spider (Araneae) taxa mainly in Baltic amber, as well as on certain related extant taxa4
- Die im Bernstein befindlichen Crustaceen, Myriapoden, Arachniden und Apteren der Vorwelt3
- Footnotes and taxonomic names, in Die im Bernstein befindlichen Crustaceen, Myriapoden, Arachniden und Apteren der Vorwelt3
- On the spiders from Taimyr ambers, Siberia, with the description of a new family and with general notes on the spiders from the Cretaceous resins (Arachnida: Araneae)2
- Die fossilen Spinnen im dominikanischen Bernstein2
- Baltic amber spiders in the Museum of Comparative Zoology2
- The Tertiary Insects of North America2
- New and already described fossil spiders (Araneae) of 20 families in mid and Late Cretaceous Burmese ambers, with notes on spider phylogeny, evolution and classification1
- On the evolution and the classification of spiders, the Mesozoic spider faunas, and descriptions of new Cretaceous taxa mainly in amber from Myanmar (Burma) (Arachnida: Araneae)1
- Spiders (Arachnida: Araneae) from the Insect Limestone (Bembridge Marls, Late Eocene) of the Isle of Wight, southern England1
Each of the 46 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 7 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Segestriidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez ( Lmbuga Commons )( Lmbuga Galipedia )
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Segestriidae was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itDysderoidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Simon 1893)