Spiders of Australia

A field guide to Spiders of Australia (2017) by Robert Whyte and Greg Anderson is a comprehensive book for beginners and enthusiasts, with 468 pages, 1350 images, 78 families, 381 genera and 836 species. In 2018 CSIRO Publishing released a third printing with updates. A fourth printing occurred in 2022. Since 2018, scientific work has given us more changes which are recorded in summary here (below) and in the affected pages on this website.

Notable name changes as of 2024
Raven, Hebron, and Williams have published five new stripe-less miturgid genera and 48 new species listed here in the World Spider Catalogue

Crab spider genus Lehtinelagia has become Tharrhalea.

Salticid Cytaea severa is now Cytaea aspera.

The Salticid Ananeon species on page 18 and 228 are Ananeon howardensis .

The Salticid Frewena at the bottom of page 245 is Papuaneon tualapa.

Deinopid Deinopis in Australia is now Asianopis.

Nephilidae, Paraplectanoididae and Phonognathidae are now families, taking spiders previously in the family Araneidae (Kuntner et al July 2023)

The pisaurid Dolomedes on page 215 is Dolomedes briangreenei. Thanks to Jim Hackett (who consulted the Raven paper) we have also seen the male (consorting with the female). The male has a white rim around the cephalothorax.

The mystery pebble nest spider on page 1 has been resolved, named after Laurence Sanders as Nemoscolus sandersi in Araneidae.

The new araneid genus Hortophora includes 13 species from the Australasian-Pacific region, with ten species known from Australia (five new to science). Novakiella has been revised, now with two species.

The araneid Alien Butt Spider has had a genus name change to Bijoaraneus. The "Bijo" part is from the Japanese, meaning "beautiful lady".

The new orbweaver araneid genus Socca has 12 Australian species Socca pustulosa, S. arena, S. australis, S. caiguna, S. elvispresleyi, S. eugeni, S. johnnywarreni, S. kullmanni, S. levyashini, S. pleia, S. senicaudata and S. sydneyica (the last here also a senior synonym of Epeira inquieta).

The salticid genus Omoedus has reverted to Zenodorus. Evacina and Evawes have reverted to Evarcha.

Australian cheiracanthiids Cheiracanthium spp. are now Eutittha spp. except for Cheiracanthium gracile which remains as is.

The family Trachycosmidae takes in some Australian genera formerly in Trochanteriidae and Gallieniellidae while Ammoxenidae has been moved into Gnaphosidae. Prodidomidae has been restored to family rank, except Molycriinae, now in Gnaphosidae.

Work has been done on some Australian crab spiders resulting in Stephanopis cambridgei and Stephanopis obtusifrons both becoming Isala cambridgei. Some Sidymella have moved to Stephanopis.

A new araneid genus Mangrovia has two species, one previously Araneus albidus , now Mangrovia albida.

A new araneid genus Salsa has been created for the former Cyclosa fuliginata species complex.

Salticid Papuaneon was first described in 2016 by Maddison. As of June 2022 with a paper by Barry Richardson it now contains six species: Papuaneon eungella (Queensland), Papuaneon eurobodalla (New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania), Papuaneon ewingar (New South Wales), Papuaneon tapin (New South Wales), Papuaneon tualapa (Papua New Guinea, Queensland) and Papuaneon werrikimbe (New South Wales).

There have been substantial changes to trapdoor (Mygalomorph) families which have been recorded in this web site with new photos of specimens courtesy of Facebook friends.

Help with ID online
For names with links to scientific papers visit the World Spider Catalogue. Facebook has many excellent groups and pages.