''Friula'' is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

of orb-weaver spiders containing the single species, ''Friula wallacei''. It was first described by

O. Pickard-Cambridge Octavius Pickard-Cambridge FRS (3 November 1828 – 9 March 1917) was an English clergyman and zoologist. He was a keen arachnologist who described and named more than 900 species of spider. Life and work Pickard-Cambridge was born in Blox ...

in 1897, and has been found only on

Borneo Borneo (; id, Kalimantan) is the third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. At the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, in relation to major Indonesian islands, it is located north of Java, west of Sulawesi, and eas ...

. Pickard-Cambridge based his description and drawing on a specimen collected by

Alfred Russel Wallace Alfred Russel Wallace (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist and illustrator. He is best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural se ...

Sarawak Sarawak (; ) is a States and federal territories of Malaysia, state of Malaysia. The largest among the 13 states, with an area almost equal to that of Peninsular Malaysia, Sarawak is located in northwest Borneo Island, and is bordered by the M ...

between November 1854 and January 1856. Pickard-Cambridge personally confirmed with Wallace that Wallace "was the captor of this spider, and in the locality mentioned." In 2017, the Alfred Russel Wallace Memorial Fund published a call for observations of this species, stating that no specimens of the species have been collected since Wallace's and that his specimen, housed at

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

, is the only known specimen in the world.

Description

Pickard-Cambridge declared that the species is allied to the orb-weaver genus ''

Gasteracantha ''Gasteracantha'' is a genus of orb-weaver spiders first named by Carl Jakob Sundevall in 1833. Species of the genus are known as spiny-backed orb-weavers, spiny orb-weavers, or spiny spiders. The females of most species are brightly colored wi ...

''. He described and illustrated two enormous, club-like spines, each longer than the width of the abdomen and crowned with "six or seven small conical prominences." He wrote, "Although an unmistakably gasteracanthid spider, it seems to me impossible to include this remarkable form in any genus as yet characterized."

References

Araneidae Monotypic Araneomorphae genera Spiders of Asia {{Araneidae-stub