The Austrochiloidea or austrochiloids are a group of araneomorph spiders, treated as a superfamily. The taxon contains two families of eight-eyed spiders: * Austrochilidae Zapfe, 1955 *

Gradungulidae Gradungulidae, also known as large-clawed spiders, is a spider family endemic to Australia and New Zealand. They are medium to large-sized haplogyne spiders with three claws and two pairs of book-lungs similar to Mygalomorphae. Some species buil ...

Forster, 1955

Phylogeny

The

monophyly In biological cladistics for the classification of organisms, monophyly is the condition of a taxonomic grouping being a clade – that is, a grouping of organisms which meets these criteria: # the grouping contains its own most recent comm ...

of the Austrochiloidea has been supported in both morphological and molecular

phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics () is the study of the evolutionary history of life using observable characteristics of organisms (or genes), which is known as phylogenetic inference. It infers the relationship among organisms based on empirical dat ...

studies. The position of the clade relative to two much larger groups,

Haplogynae The Haplogynae or haplogynes are one of the two main groups into which araneomorph spiders have traditionally been divided, the other being the Entelegynae. Morphological phylogenetic studies suggested that the Haplogynae formed a clade; more re ...

and Entelegynae, has varied. A summary in 2005 showed the Austrochiloidea to be basal to both groups: Two studies have placed representatives of the Austrochiloidea between the two, suggesting they have more derived characters than previously supposed:

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q54482 Araneomorphae Arachnid superfamilies