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Sticker of Dark sheetwebber
Bug card No. 1295 of 4,939

Dark sheetwebber

Euprosthenopsis pulchella
Name means: “pulchella is Latin for beautiful or pretty”
Eats: Other bugs and small animalsSpidersGardens and meadows8 legsNot an insect, but a bug cousin

The dark sheetwebber is a spider from southern Africa that spins a flat sheet of web. It builds its sheet low down in bushes, or between big tufts of grass. It is a cousin of the nursery-web spiders.

Fun fact: spiders are not insects. Insects have six legs, spiders have eight. Everyone calls them bugs anyway!
Lives in
South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini, in bushes and grassland
Top speed
about 1.2 km/h (0.75 mph)
On foot, estimate
What does it eat?
It catches insects that land on or fall into its sheet web.
For real!Photo of Dark sheetwebber
Picture by Peter Webb. CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

It lives from near the sea up to about 1550 metres high.

2

The female was described in 1902, but the male was only described in 2014.

3

It has been found in more than 10 nature reserves, and it is not in danger.

you asked

Most asked questions about Dark sheetwebber

?Where does the dark sheetwebber live?

In South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini, in bushes and between grass tussocks.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Euprosthenopsis pulchella
Named by
Pocock, 1902
Group
Spiders
Family
Pisauridae
Classification
Arachnida > Araneae > Pisauridae
Lives on
Africa
Also known as
Common Euprosthenopsis nursery-web spider

Where the facts come from

  1. Euprosthenopsis pulchella (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Peter Webb. CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.

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More from the same group: Spiders

Also at home here: Gardens and meadows

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