''Caponia'', also called eight-eyed orange lungless spiders, is an
Afrotropical
The Afrotropical realm is one of Earth's eight biogeographic realms. It includes Africa south of the Sahara Desert, the majority of the Arabian Peninsula, the island of Madagascar, southern Iran and extreme southwestern Pakistan, and the island ...
genus of
araneomorph spiders in the family
Caponiidae
Caponiidae is a family of ecribellate haplogyne spiders that are unusual in a number of ways. They differ from other spiders in lacking book lungs and having the posterior median spinnerets anteriorly displaced to form a transverse row with the a ...
, first described by
Eugène Simon
Eugène Louis Simon (; 30 April 1848 – 17 November 1924) was a French naturalist who worked particularly on insects and spiders, but also on birds and plants. He is by far the most prolific spider taxonomist in history, describing over 4, ...
in 1887.
As the common name implies, these spiders have a tightly arranged set of eight eyes, as opposed to the related two-eyed genus ''
Diploglena
''Diploglena'' is a genus of African araneomorph spiders in the family Caponiidae, first described by William Frederick Purcell
William Frederick Purcell (18 September 1866 - 3 October 1919) was an English-born South African arachnologist an ...
'', and breathe using two pairs of tracheae rather than
book lung
A book lung is a type of respiration organ used for atmospheric gas exchange that is present in many arachnids, such as scorpions and spiders. Each of these organs is located inside an open ventral abdominal, air-filled cavity (atrium) and conn ...
s. They are agile, nocturnal hunters, that hide by day in a variety of silk-lined retreats.
Species
it contains ten species:
*''
Caponia braunsi''
Purcell, 1904 – South Africa
*''
Caponia capensis
''Caponia'', also called eight-eyed orange lungless spiders, is an Afrotropical realm, Afrotropical genus of Araneomorphae, araneomorph spiders in the family Caponiidae, first described by Eugène Simon in 1887. As the common name implies, these ...
''
Purcell, 1904 – South Africa, Mozambique
*''
Caponia chelifera''
Lessert, 1936 – Mozambique
*''
Caponia forficifera''
Purcell, 1904 – South Africa
*''
Caponia hastifera''
Purcell, 1904 – South Africa, Mozambique
*''
Caponia karrooica''
Purcell, 1904 – South Africa
*''
Caponia natalensis''
(O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1874) (
type
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* TYPE (DOS command), a command to display contents of a file.
* Ty ...
) – Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa
*''
Caponia secunda''
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, 1900 – South Africa
*''
Caponia simoni''
Purcell, 1904 – South Africa
*''
Caponia spiralifera''
Purcell, 1904 – South Africa
References
Araneomorphae genera
Caponiidae
Spiders of Africa
Taxa named by Eugène Simon
{{Caponiidae-stub