Theridiidae  Sundevall, 1833 / Theridula  Emerton, 1882   3 species

Theridula opulenta  (Walckenaer, 1841)

Description
Male

Palp: embolus quite straight. Prosoma 0.79 mm long. Opisthosoma grey to black, usually with one to 5 lighter spots.

Body length male: 1.2-1.7 mm
Female

Epigyne: posterior area heavily sclerotized and dark brown. Prosoma yellow to dark brown, 0.91 mm long. Opisthosoma grey-brown to black, pattern variable, with a central whitish patch, and lateral extensions tipped with black, sometimes pattern as in T. gonygaster. Opisthosoma rhomboidal, wider than long.

Body length female: 1.6-2.6 mm
Additional information

In bushes, dry grasslands and stony areas in mountains.

This species of North American origin is not native to Europe (alien species). It had been introduced to Europe at least once and did establish.

Distribution
  Presence
  No data
Distribution comment: Probably all records from Europe belong to Theridula gonygaster (Lecigne et al. 2022)
Global distribution (WSC 2024): North America. Introduced to southern Europe, India
Figures
Distribution List

"No references" does not mean that the species does not occur in this country, but that we have not yet inserted the reference for it. We are working on it.

Croatia   (Milosevic, 2002) ||| France  Removed (Le Peru, 2007; Lecigne et al., 2022) ||| France / Corsica  Removed (Le Peru, 2007; Lecigne et al., 2022) ||| Georgia   (Otto, 2022) ||| Italy   (Pantini & Isaia, 2019) ||| Portugal   (Branco et al., 2019) ||| Russia, Southern   (Otto, 2022) |||
References

Branco V V, Morano E, Cardoso P (2019) An update to the Iberian spider checklist (Araneae). Zootaxa 4614: 201-254 pdf

Le Peru B (2007) Catalogue et répartition des araignées de France. Revue Arachnologique 16: 1-468 pdf

Lecigne S, Courtial C, Danflous S, Déjean S, Guerbaa K, Jacquet C, Montagne D, Montardi Y, Villepoux O (2022) De araneis Galliae IV, actualisation du référentiel des araignées de France - troisième note. Révision du statut de certaines espèces de la faune de France. Bulletin de l'Association Française d'Arachnologie 6: 3-38 pdf

Levi H W (1954) The spider genus Theridula in North and Central America and the West Indies (Araneae: Theridiidae). Transactions of the American Microscopical Society 73: 331-343 pdf

Milosevic B (2002) Aranea – Popis vrsta – Checklist. Hrvatsko entomološko društvo – Inventar entomofaune Hrvatske [Aranea – List of species – Checklist. Croatian Entomological Society – Inventory of Croatian entomofauna]. pdf

Otto S (2022) Caucasian spiders. A faunistic database on the spiders of the Caucasus Ecoregion. Database version 02.2022. Internet: caucasus-spiders.info.

Pantini P, Isaia M (2019) Araneae.it: the online catalog of Italian spiders, with addenda on other arachnid orders occurring in Italy (Arachnida: Araneae, Opiliones, Palpigradi, Pseudoscorpionida, Scorpiones, Solifugae). Fragmenta Entomologica 51: 127-152 pdf

WSC (2024) World Spider Catalog. Version 25.0. Natural History Museum Bern, online at http://wsc.nmbe.ch (22.01.2024) doi: 10.24436/2 pdf

Updates
21-01-2022 Distribution update Detail
16-07-2020 Distribution update Detail
20-11-2014 Image insert