Prey Capture by Drymusa Dinora(Araneae, Scytodidae)

The genus Drymusa, a small and poorly studied group, is morphologically more closely related to Loxosceles than to Scytodes. It lacks the high carapace, and possesses a colulus; also the male bulbus is located at the tip of the tarsus (Valerio, I97I). The forest-dwelling species of D. dinora Valerio, which lives exclusively under logs utilizing crevices and horizontal tunnels in the decomposed wood (Valerio, I97I), exhibits highly specialized behavioral patterns never observed in other spiders. The permanent web, composed of a few tangled threads, seems to alert the spider to the presence of prey and to restrict the movement of prey. Clearly, this type of construction represents a very primitive conditon in the phylogeny of the web (Kaston, 1966).