Occur in 9 scientific families

When Charles Darwin voyaged to South America on the Beagle, he discovered a species of spider that formed huge colonies. In the spiders, sociality evolved separately and was a very rare event. There are around 40,000 described spiders in 100 families. And of these, sociality occurs in 25 species across 9 families. The most well studied of the social spiders is Anolesimius eximius, which are no bigger than a pencil eraser. They build a hammock shaped web and can usually be found along the banks of rivers in the Amazon Basin. Cooperating in groups, the spiders can capture prey many times their size.

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