Eresus, also called ladybird spiders, is a genus of velvet spiders (family Eresidae) that was first described by Charles Athanase Walckenaer in 1805. Members of the genus formerly called Eresus cinnaberinus or Eresus niger are now placed in one of three species: Eresus kollari, Eresus sandaliatus and Eresus moravicus. A new species Eresus urus (named after the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur), was discovered in southern Iraq in March 2025.
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Eresus, also called ladybird spiders, is a genus of velvet spiders (family Eresidae) that was first described by Charles Athanase Walckenaer in 1805. Members of the genus formerly called Eresus cinnaberinus or Eresus niger are now placed in one of three species: Eresus kollari, Eresus sandaliatus and Eresus moravicus. A new species Eresus urus (named after the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur), was discovered in southern Iraq in March 2025.
== Description == They resemble both jumping spiders and the spiders in the Palpimanidae, as their body shapes are similar and their body is velvety. Males of this genus have a red abdomen with black spotting, usually sporting 4 black spots. The rest of the body is usually black, with some reddish or white areas. Females of this genus usually have dull colors, in grey, brown or black tones. For most individuals, the full body length reaches 8.5 to 20mm, with a distinct prosomal length of 3.6 to 6.1 mm. In some species, the females have some yellow coloration, though they are still significantly duller than the males.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).