THE EPEIRID^ 



The Epeiridae are the makers of the familiar round cobwebs. 

 Like the Therididse and the Linyphiadae, they live always in 

 their webs or nests back downward or, when in the round web, 

 head downward. The cephalothorax is generally short, as in 

 Therididae, and low and wide in front, with the eyes near the 

 front edge, the lateral pairs close together and farther from 

 the middle eyes than the latter are from each other. The 

 mandibles are large and strong. The maxillae are short, often 

 as short as wide, and parallel or a little divergent and rounded 

 at the ends, never pointed or turned inward. The labium is 

 shorter than wide and rounded or slightly pointed at the end. 

 The legs are usually long and, more commonly than in the 

 other cobweb spiders, stout and furnished with spines. 



Most of the common species belong to the genus Epeira 

 and its allies, having rounded abdomens and stout legs, some 

 of them with humps and spines and peculiar angular forms of 

 the abdomen. The colors are often bright, and those of the 

 abdomen arranged in a triangular or leaf-shaped pattern. In 

 Meta (p. 190) and Argyroepeira (p. 191) the abdomen is more 

 elongated and the form and marking more like Linyphia. In 

 Tetragnatha (p. 201) the whole body is long and slender, the 

 abdomen several times as long as the cephalothorax, and the 

 maxillas and mandibles, especially in the males, much elongated. 

 The colors are more uniform and the markings faint, usually 

 light gray, yellow, or green, like the plants among which they 

 live. The round webs of the Epeiridae consist of a number 

 of radiating lines, varying in different species from a dozen to 

 seventy, crossed by two spirals, — an inner spiral that begins 



154 



