Topic summary
Ecribellate
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Cribellum.
Ancestral trait
The presence or absence of a cribellum is used to classify araneomorph spiders into the cribellate and ecribellate (not cribellate) type. The distinction can be used to study evolutionary relationships. However, in 1967 it was discovered that there are many families with both cribellate and ecribellate members (Lehtinen, 1967). Some species, such as Amaurobius ferox, are also capable of switching between cribellate and ecribellate silk, primarily using cribellate silk for webs and ecribellate silk for trophic eggs.