Nursery web spider

Common card · No. 200907

Nursery web spiders (Pisauridae) are a family of araneomorph spiders first described by Eugène Simon in 1890. Females of the family are known for building special nursery webs. When their eggs are about to hatch, a female spider builds a tent-like web, places her egg sac inside, and stands guard outside, hence the family's common name. Like wolf spiders, however, nursery web spiders are roaming hunters that do not use webs for catching prey. The name "nursery web spider" is especially given to the European species Pisaura mirabilis. Adult female specimens may reach up to 15 mm in length, excluding legs. The legs of the male are longer in relation to body size than those of the female.

Read on Wikipedia · Image Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0