''Xerolycosa nemoralis'', or the burnt wolf spider, is a species of

wolf spider Wolf spiders are members of the family Lycosidae (). They are robust and agile hunters with excellent eyesight. They live mostly in solitude, hunt alone, and do not spin webs. Some are opportunistic hunters, pouncing upon prey as they find it or ...

found from western Europe eastwards to the Pacific.

Description

The male has swollen

palpal bulb The two palpal bulbs – also known as palpal organs and genital bulbs – are the copulatory organs of a male spider. They are borne on the last segment of the pedipalps (the front "limbs" of a spider), giving the spider an appearance often descr ...

s which are as long as they are wide at the base. The grooves on the genital shield are wider than they are long. The

prosoma The cephalothorax, also called prosoma in some groups, is a tagma of various arthropods, comprising the head and the thorax fused together, as distinct from the abdomen behind. (The terms ''prosoma'' and ''opisthosoma'' are equivalent to ''cepha ...

is brown, with a bright median stripe, which has parallel margins with white hair. The

sternum The sternum or breastbone is a long flat bone located in the central part of the chest. It connects to the ribs via cartilage and forms the front of the rib cage, thus helping to protect the heart, lungs, and major blood vessels from injury. Sh ...

is dark brown and the legs are a uniform dark brown, almost black. The

opisthosoma The opisthosoma is the posterior part of the body in some arthropods, behind the prosoma (cephalothorax). It is a distinctive feature of the subphylum Chelicerata (arachnids, horseshoe crabs and others). Although it is similar in most respects to a ...

is dark brown with a slightly darker cardiac spot. The males are in length, the larger females . 2013

Habitat and ecology

The spider lives in dry litter and bark in sunny coppiced areas or clearings in woods, on stony chalk grassland with a short sward, on burnt

heathland A heath () is a shrubland habitat found mainly on free-draining infertile, acidic soils and characterised by open, low-growing woody vegetation. Moorland is generally related to high-ground heaths with—especially in Great Britain—a cooler ...

(up to approximately four years after the heath has been burnt) or bare patches of ground in older heathland. ''X. nemoralis'' has occurred in large numbers in sparsely vegetated man-made sites, such as railway ballast, almost to the exclusion of other wolf-spiders. In mainland Europe, it can be found on the sunny edges of coniferous forest up to 1800 m above sea level. Female ''Xerolycosa nemoralis'' are known to excavate shallow depressions in soil. In Britain, ''X. nemoralis'' is active from late March through the summer to mid-September. The males emerge earlier than the females and the last specimens in Autumn are females.

Distribution

''X. nemoralis'' is widely distributed in Europe from south eastern

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

east to

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

. And across the

Palearctic The Palearctic or Palaearctic is the largest of the eight biogeographic realms of the Earth. It stretches across all of Eurasia north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. The realm consists of several bioregions: the Euro-Sibe ...

Kamchatka The Kamchatka Peninsula (russian: полуостров Камчатка, Poluostrov Kamchatka, ) is a peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of about . The Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Okhotsk make up the peninsula's eastern and wes ...

and

Honshu , historically called , is the largest and most populous island of Japan. It is located south of Hokkaidō across the Tsugaru Strait, north of Shikoku across the Inland Sea, and northeast of Kyūshū across the Kanmon Straits. The island separ ...

, south as far as

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of th ...

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1058603 Lycosidae Spiders of Europe Palearctic spiders Spiders of Asia Spiders described in 1861