
Seothyra, commonly known as the buckspoor spiders, buck spoor spiders or just spoor spiders, belong to a sand-dwelling, burrowing genus of araneomorph spiders in the family Eresidae. The 13 species are endemic to the arid, sandy flats and semistabilized red dunes of southern Africa. They are sexually dimorphic. The tiny males, which are seldom seen, imitate sugar ants or velvet ants in their appearance and habits, while the females hide in and hunt from their characteristic burrows. They are thermophilous, with males as well as females being most active on hot days.
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Seothyra, commonly known as the buckspoor spiders, buck spoor spiders or just spoor spiders, belong to a sand-dwelling, burrowing genus of araneomorph spiders in the family Eresidae. The 13 species are endemic to the arid, sandy flats and semistabilized red dunes of southern Africa. They are sexually dimorphic. The tiny males, which are seldom seen, imitate sugar ants or velvet ants in their appearance and habits, while the females hide in and hunt from their characteristic burrows. They are thermophilous, with males as well as females being most active on hot days.
==Range and density== They occur in Namibia, Botswana and South Africa. In South Africa they are present in northern Limpopo, and the Northern Cape as far south as the Tankwa Karoo. Their distribution is patchy, but when forming conspecific aggregations, their webs may even touch one another. Such clusters may contain thousands of females, with a density of 50 m−2, or locally, 100 to 200 m−2.
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