Archaeodictyna condocta is a species of spider in the family Dictynidae. It is commonly known as the grass mesh-web spider.
Distribution
Archaeodictyna condocta is found in North Africa, East Africa and Kazakhstan, and has been introduced to South Africa. In Egypt it has been recorded from Alexandria, Cairo, Lower Egypt and Suez. In South Africa, it is known from several localities in four provinces: Free State, Gauteng, Northern Cape, and Western Cape.
Habitat and ecology
Female Archaeodictyna condocta in its tangled web on a dead twig.
The irregular web of Archaeodictyna condocta.
The species is found at altitudes ranging from 84 to 1,316 m above sea level. Archaeodictyna condocta constructs retreat-webs on leaves, in crevices, or between twigs. The species has been recorded from various biomes but is more common in grassland and savanna.
Archaeodictyna condocta is known from both sexes. Like other species in this genus, they are small spiders; females measure 2 mm in body length and males 1.5 mm, with pale carapaces and pale, oval opisthosoma with dark brown to black markings for females and with dark brown carapaces and a more elongated and light brown opisthosoma for males.
Female Archaeodictyna condocta resting in its silk retreat.
Brown-phase male Archaeodictyna condocta on a grass blade.
The species was first described by O. Pickard-Cambridge in 1876 as Dictyna condocta, in a paper cataloguing spiders collected in Egypt. It was later transferred to the genus Archaeodictyna by Lehtinen in 1967, who also synonymized several other species with A. condocta, including Dictyna abyssinica, D. montana, D. pygmaea, and D. sedilloti deserta.
12Pickard-Cambridge, O. (1876). "Catalogue of a collection of spiders made in Egypt, with descriptions of new species and characters of a new genus". Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. 44 (3): 541–630. doi:10.1111/j.1096-3642.1876.tb02595.x.
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