Entelegyne  Spiders - Infraorder:   Entelegynae
​"You made me your friend and in doing so, you made a spider beautiful to everyone in that barn."
Charlotte the Spider  in  'Charlotte's Web' (1952), by  Elwyn B. White  (1899 - 1985).
      Spiders in the Order: Aranae are divided into two groups of which the Infraorder: Entelegynae is one, the other being the Haplogynae, the smaller of the two.  Distinction between the two is based based solely on the anatomy of the genitals of mostly females and, to a lesser extent of the males as well.  In Entelegyne Spiders the females have three* genital openings two of which are used by the males to deposit sperm packets into which are then stored inside the female body in the spermathecae - small repositories within the female body specifically to store sperm.   They normally come in pairs and are internally connected to the central genital tube leading to opening from which the fertilized egg emerges.
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      Using the aforementioned distinction it has generally been agreed upon that the Entelegynae are a clade.    A clade being a group of related organisms with a common ancestor.**   This does not mean however that taxonomic issues are laid to rest though.  Until recently Spiders were classified on the basis of the structure of their web-spinning organs. Some spiders have what is called a cribellum as well as the more usual spinnerets.  The cribellum is a bit like sieve from which extremely fine silk protrudes.  As this is an external feature of spiders, the presence , or lack of, a crebellum became a convenient, if incorrect, means to classify spiders.  As it turns out, even within a genus not all species are the same using this criterium only.
*    Results from studies published in 2019 indicate that female spiders have four genital openings with the fourth ​being a secondary uterine opening.  The exact purpose of this secondary  opening has not as yet been properly explained. (See Zhan. Y. et al 2019)
**    Strictly speaking, all of life could be considered one large clade.  However, to determine what is a clade you only go back so far as to find a common ancestor from which no other group at the same taxonomic level has evolved.
      The Entelegynae are divided into 17 superfamilies plus 10 families that have no direct association with any of the Superfamilies,  i.e. Unplaced Families.   Of the ten families, five have representatives in the Northern Rivers while of all the superfamilies only one,  the Superfamily: Agelenoidea or Funnel Weavers,  is missing locally.  However, the continued validity of this superfamily has been in doubt for considerable time now.
Unplaced families:
Superfamilies:
References  and  links:
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^     Zhan, Y., Jiang, H., Wu, Q., Zhang, H., Bai, Z., Kuntner, M.  and  Tu, L.  (2019).   'Comparative morphology refines the conventional model of spider reproduction.'  PLoS One. 2019 Jul 5;14(7):e0218486.   doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0218486.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agelenoidea
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clade
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cribellum
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Header photo:
Diana Davey.
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