The Status of the Family Archaeidae and the Genus Landana

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Abstract
The family Archaeidae was established by C. L. Koch and G. C. Berendt in their work published posthumously in 1854. No definition of the family was given, but the characters of the genus Archaea were given even in greater detail than was customary at the time. Three fossil species from Baltic amber were included in the genus, described and figured. These are A. paradoxa, A. conica and A. laevigata. A. Menge who edited the work of Koch and Berendt, added, in a footnote on page 22, to the above three species three other species, A. sphinx, A. incomta and A. hyperoptica, also from the Baltic amber. In 1881 O. P. Cambridge described the first recent species of Archaea from Madagascar under the name of Eriauchenus workmanni. In 1883 Simon established the genus Landana for a new species L. petiti from, the Congo, which he placed in the family Archaeidae. In the same year he described a fossil spider from the Baltic amber under the name Archaea pugneti and a recent spider from Cape Horn which he referred to a new genus Mecysmauchenius. Simon placed this genus with its type species M. segmentatus in the family Archaeidae. In 1893 he described a new species of Landana from Venezuela, L. cygnea, still placing it in the family Archaeidae. Only in 1895 did Simon remove the genus Landana from the family Archaediae into the group Meteae, subfamily Tetragnathinae of the family Argiopidae as delimited by him in his Histoire Naturelle des Araignees. His decision was based on the marked difference in the shape of the cephalothorax and chelicerae in the two sexes of Landana and on the fact that the web of the female L. cygnea is similar to that of Meta, i.e., has the structure of a geometric orb-web. In 1904 Simon described another species of Landana, L. edwardsi, from Chile, referring it naturally to his subfamily Tetragnathinae. In the same paper he mentions a Landana wilsoni Simon which “represents the genus in the extreme South of America, is much larger and resembles in size and somewhat in coloration our Meta merianae Scopoli” (p. 95, my translation, A. P.). I am unable to find the description of this species, nor is it mentioned by Dalmas. In 1907 Tullgren described Mecysmauchenius nordenskjoldi from Patagonia. In 1917 Dalmas described Landana lautiuscula from New Zealand. In 1919 Hewitt described Archaea godfreyi from South Africa and in 1929 Butler described Archaea hickmani from Australia. Thus up to the present we know seven fossil and three recent species of Archaea and two species of Mecysmauchenius comprising the family Archaeidae, and four species of the genus Landana.

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