Erigone prominens?

Fact Box Species: Erigone prominens? (QM) (but see notes below) Family: Linyphiidae Body length: female: about 4 mm male: 2.5 mm Habitat: Uncertain but Erigone species are said to build small webs in moss or moist leaf litter or on pastures and low green vegetation where the humidity is high Toxicity: The venom of this species has never been tested but this spider is too small to harm a human

Oblique view

The male specimen shown on this page has the row of 'saw teeth' along the outer edge of each chelicera which apparently is a distinctive character on Erigone prominens and can be seen on photos labelled Erigone prominens from the Western Australian PaDIL website and also on the New Zealand website of Stephen Thorpe (University of Auckland). However, in May 2017 the World Spider Catalog did not list E. prominens as an Australian species although Jennifer Shield includes it in her booklet of Victorian spiders. This leads to just two possibilities: either the World Spider Catalog listing needs to be updated to show that E. prominens can be found across Australia or the spider shown on this page is not E. prominens but a close relative of it.

Known Range: Allegedly widely found in Eastern Australia and Tasmania and even in Perth.

Spider(s) with a very similar appearance: Some small araneid and theridiid species.