The Austrochiloidea or austrochiloids are a group of
araneomorph spiders, treated as a
superfamily. The taxon contains two
families of eight-eyed spiders:[1]
The
monophyly of the Austrochiloidea has been supported in both morphological and molecular
phylogenetic studies. The position of the clade relative to two much larger groups,
Haplogynae and
Entelegynae, has varied. A summary in 2005 showed the Austrochiloidea to be basal to both groups:[2][3]
Austrochiloidea
Haplogynae
Entelegynae
Two studies have placed representatives of the Austrochiloidea between the two, suggesting they have more derived characters than previously supposed:[3][4][5]
^Coddington, Jonathan A. (2005).
"Phylogeny and classification of spiders"(PDF). In Ubick, D.; Paquin, P.; Cushing, P.E. & Roth, V. (eds.). Spiders of North America: an identification manual. American Arachnological Society. pp. 18–24. Retrieved 2015-09-24. p. 20.
^Blackledge, Todd A.; Scharff, Nikolaj; Coddington, Jonathan A.; Szüts, Tamas; Wenzel, John W.; Hayashi, Cheryl Y. & Agnarsson, Ingi (2009), "Reconstructing web evolution and spider diversification in the molecular era", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106 (13): 5229–5234,
Bibcode:
2009PNAS..106.5229B,
doi:10.1073/pnas.0901377106,
PMC2656561,
PMID19289848