Spiders of Australia with information and pictures.

Spiders of Australia Green jumping spider Mopsus mormon
Home <-- This site aim is to show the common spiders of Australia by means of color photos and informative text. These pages together contain over 2000 spider pictures with 520 species in 179 genera that were photographed in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Northern-Territory and Western Australia. Pictures of spiders from NW-Europe and several links to venomous spiders and much more information can be found on the spider site of European spiders.
Spiders (class Arachnida) are eight-legged creatures belonging to a group (phylum) called Arthropoda that are different from insects (class Hexapoda) on several easy to see characteristics. They have no antennae, their eyes are like ours and not segmented, and they have four pairs of legs. More general spider information can be found on these pages: Spider information.
Common backyard spiders.
Click on a picture or for a thumbnail overview here for an overview of all pictures on this site. Easy if you want to identify your spider by photo.	The Australian spider identification location chart may be easy to identify a spider by the location where you found it.


St Andrew's cross	Leaf-curling	Garden orbweaver	Golder orbweaver	Netcasting

Tent	Long-jawed	Spiny	Mouse or primitive	Daddy-longleg

Stick	Lynx	Flower	Fishing	Spitting

Redback	Ant-mimicking	Wolf	Prowling	Jumping

Huntsman	Black house	Slater-eating	White-tailed	Sydney funnelweb

Spotted ground	Wasp mimicking	Sac	Mouse	Jumping

Australian animals are made very dangerous by documentaries featuring sharks, box jellyfishes, crocodiles, snakes and spiders in which they kill ferociously other creatures. Sometimes they are caught by fearless hunters in four-wheel drives or +2000 hp boats. It is true, bites of crocodiles, sharks and black mambas are to be avoided.
It is also suggested that bites of spiders will almost kill you instantly or can cause the affected limb falling off by ulceration and necrotic lesions. Luckily for us that is not true.

Two spiders should be avoided, the Sydney Funnel-web (Atrax robustus) that lives in a 100 km circle around Sydney and the Redback (Latrodectus hasselti). Their bites can be very painful. Are those two to be worried about? Since 1956 nobody died from a Redback bite and since 1980 nobody from a Sydney Funnel-web bite, because of the development of an antivenom and better medical treatment.
A recent study by Isbister and Gray showed that the White-tail (Lampona species) spider bite is most probably harmless.
A review of the toxicity of several Australian spiders can be read here.
But if in doubt, leave the spider where it is and walk away. And, a bee sting is often more painful than most spider bites.
And if bitten? look here.

Links to the pages of families of Australian spiders

Amaurobiidae, Desidae, Dictynidae & Oecobiidae, lace web spiders Araneidae, orb-weavers
Araneidae, nephila or golden orb web spiders
Araneidae, tent-web spiders
Clubionidae, Corrinidae & Gnaphosidae, sac spiders
Deinopidae, net-casting or ogre-faced spiders Dysderidae, slater eating spiders Eutichuridae, rainforest and garden sac spiders Heteropodidae, huntsman spiders Hersiliidae, two-tailed spiders
Lamponidae, white-tailed spiders Linyphiidae, lattice web spiders Lycosidae, wolf spiders Mimetidae, pirate spiders Miturgidae, prowling spiders Mygalomorphae or primitive spiders Nicodamidae, red and black spiders
Oxyopidae, lynx spiders Philodromidae, small huntsman spiders Pholcidae, daddy longlegs Pisauridae, nursery web or fishing spiders Salticidae, jumping spiders
Scytodidae, spitting spiders Stiphididae, lattice web spiders
Tetragnathidae, long jawed spiders
Theridiidae, comb-footed spiders, (Red back) Trochanteriidae, flat spiders
Thomisidae, crab spiders
Uloboridae, orb-web cribellate spiders Zodariidae, burrow-making spiders Zoridae, wandering spiders

Common spider information

Spider information
Australian spider identification location chart
The demystification of the toxicity of spiders
The anatomy of a spider
The spinnerets and the properties of silk
The construction of a wheel web
High resolution detail of the fangs of a spider
A perfect spider and bird watchers camping site in Queensland The Australian Arachnology society Salticidae of the world by Jerzy Proszynski
To the spider page of European spiders < --More links at the bottom of this page

Literature

: Checklist of Australian spiders from the Australian Arachnological Society

Australian spider sites

Ed Nieuwenhuys, 2 february 2024