neville parkfeeling a little relieved about never identifying any dictynid to genus as the whole family's been overhauled: https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlaf007
soaproot@nev That's quite an impressive abstract, just in terms of the sheer number of taxa being moved around, and the intriguing hints at the methods. But in case anyone is daunted by the length and complexity of said abstract, perhaps I can level-set for the non-specialist by pull-quoting the last three words of the abstract. This paper concerns, and I quote: "little brown spiders".
@soaproot It is more figurative (like the birders' "little brown jobs") than literal; the most common dictynids in my area are often intriguingly pixel-art-like black-and-white or white-and-black, or apricot-coloured.
They are very small, rarely noticed spiders that make messy little webs with back-combed fuzzy silk in crevices or around the slightest protrusions like bolts.
@soaproot Oh, and interestingly for spiders, they do seem to shack up together at least briefly. There seems to be competition for mates which results in very interesting behaviour like fighting and sneaking: https://nevillepark.ca/2018/07/13/dictynidae-drama/
I've also seen practically *neighbourly* behaviour, with dictynids living in close proximity merging webs and not attacking each other.
So while they may be small and overlooked, they are far from boring!