Huttonia

Huttonia
Huttonia sp. (male), from New Zealand
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Subphylum:	Chelicerata
Class:	Arachnida
Order:	Araneae
Infraorder:	Araneomorphae
Family:	Huttoniidae Simon, 1893
Genus:	Huttonia O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1879
Species:	H. palpimanoides
Binomial name
Huttonia palpimanoides O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1879

Huttonia palpimanoides is a spider in its own genus, Huttonia, and its own family, Huttoniidae.

The species is endemic to New Zealand. Fossils of this class have been found from Cretaceous (Campanian) amber from Alberta and Manitoba, Canada, extending the known geological age of the Huttoniidae back about 80 million years, and supporting the theory of H. palpimanoides being an ousted relict species (Penney & Selden, 2006). They are probably closely related to the fossil spider family Spatiatoridae.

The family was divided from the Zodariidae family in 1984, by Forster & Platnick.

Although only one species is described, there are about 20 more undescribed species, all from New Zealand (Forster & Forster, 1999).

The silk of this species is ecribellate (Griswold et al. 1999).

References

• Forster, R.R. & Platnick, N.I. (1984). A review of the archaeid spiders and their relatives, with notes on the limits of the superfamily Palpimanoidea (Arachnida, Araneae). Bull. Am. Mus. nat. Hist. 178: 1-106.
• Forster, R.R. & Forster, L.M. (1999). Spiders of New Zealand and their Worldwide Kin. University of Otago Pross, Dunedin.
• Griswold, C.E., Coddington, J.A., Platnick, N.I. and Forster, R.R. (1999). Towards a Phylogeny of Entelegyne Spiders (Araneae, Araneomorphae, Entelegynae). Journal of Arachnology 27:53-63. PDF
• Penney, D. & Selden, P.A. (2006). First fossil Huttoniidae (Araneae), in Late Cretaceous Canadian Cedar and Grassy Lake ambers. Cretaceous Research 27:442–446. PDF