Parasteatoda is a genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 of spider

Spider

Spiders are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, and chelicerae with fangs that inject venom. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species diversity among all other groups of organisms...

s in the Theridiidae

Theridiidae

Theridiidae is a large family of spiders, also known as the tangle-web spiders, cobweb spiders and comb-footed spiders. The diverse family includes over 2200 species in over 100 genera) of three-dimensional space-web-builders found throughout the world...

 (tangle web spider) family.

Distribution

This is mostly an Old World

Old World

The Old World consists of those parts of the world known to classical antiquity and the European Middle Ages. It is used in the context of, and contrast with, the "New World" ....

 genus, with many species found in Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

 and New Guinea

New Guinea

New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...

, but reaching into Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

. A single species, P. tepidariorum is found in the New World

New World

The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...

, but P. tepidariorum australis can also be found in New Guinea, Myanmar and Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

.

Taxonomy

Many species in this genus were moved from Achaearanea

Achaearanea

Achaearanea is a genus of spiders in the Theridiidae family.-Taxonomy:This genus used to include the extremely abundant common house spider, which was transferred to genus Parasteatoda in 2006, together with many other species. A. veruculata and many more species were moved to genus Cryptachaea in...

during a major revision in 2008.

Name

The genus name is combined from Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

 para "beside, near" and the theridiid genus Steatoda

Steatoda

The spider genus Steatoda, in the family Theridiidae, includes over 120 recognized species, distributed around the world ....

. The Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

 name for this genus is O-himogumo zoku ("thread silk spider family").

Species

• Parasteatoda angulithorax (Bösenberg & Strand, 1906) — Russia, China, Korea, Taiwan, Japan
• Parasteatoda asiatica (Bösenberg & Strand, 1906) — China, Korea, Japan
• Parasteatoda brookesiana (Barrion & Litsinger, 1995) — India, Philippines
• Parasteatoda campanulata (Chen, 1993) — China
• Parasteatoda camura (Simon, 1877) — Philippines, New Guinea, Solomon Islands
• Parasteatoda celsadomina (Zhu, 1998) — China
• Parasteatoda cingulata (Zhu, 1998) — China
• Parasteatoda culicivora (Bösenberg & Strand, 1906) — China, Japan
• Parasteatoda daliensis (Zhu, 1998) — China
• Parasteatoda decorata (L. Koch, 1867) — Krakatau, New Guinea, Queensland
• Parasteatoda ducta (Zhu, 1998) — China
• Parasteatoda ferrumequina (Bösenberg & Strand, 1906) — China, Korea, Japan
• Parasteatoda galeiforma (Zhu, Zhang & Xu, 1991) — China
• Parasteatoda gui (Zhu, 1998) — China
• Parasteatoda hammeni (Chrysanthus, 1963) — New Guinea
• Parasteatoda japonica (Bösenberg & Strand, 1906) — China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan
• Parasteatoda jinghongensis (Zhu, 1998) — China
• Parasteatoda kaindi (Levi, Lubin & Robinson, 1982) — New Guinea
• Parasteatoda kompirensis (Bösenberg & Strand, 1906) — China, Korea, Japan
• Parasteatoda lanyuensis (Yoshida, Tso & Severinghaus, 2000) — Taiwan
• Parasteatoda longiducta (Zhu, 1998) — China
• Parasteatoda lunata (Clerck, 1757) — Palearctic
  • Parasteatoda lunata serrata (Franganillo, 1930) — Cuba
• Parasteatoda mundula (L. Koch, 1872) — India to New Caledonia
  • Parasteatoda mundula papuana (Chrysanthus, 1963) — New Guinea
• Parasteatoda oculiprominens (Saito, 1939) — China, Korea, Japan
• Parasteatoda oxymaculata (Zhu, 1998) — China
• Parasteatoda polygramma (Kulczynski, 1911) — New Guinea
• Parasteatoda quadrimaculata (Yoshida, Tso & Severinghaus, 2000) — Taiwan
• Parasteatoda ryukyu (Yoshida, 2000) — Japan, Ryukyu Islands
• Parasteatoda simulans (Thorell, 1875) — Palearctic
• Parasteatoda songi (Zhu, 1998) — China
• Parasteatoda subtabulata (Zhu, 1998) — China
• Parasteatoda subvexa (Zhu, 1998) — China
• Parasteatoda tabulata (Levi, 1980) — Holarctic
• Parasteatoda tepidariorum (C. L. Koch, 1841) — Americas
  • Parasteatoda tepidariorum australis (Thorell, 1895) — New Guinea, Myanmar, Pakistan
• Parasteatoda tesselata (Keyserling, 1884) — Mexico to Paraguay, New Guinea, Pakistan
• Parasteatoda transipora (Zhu & Zhang, 1992) — China
• Parasteatoda triangula (Yoshida, 1993) — Singapore, Java, Bali
• Parasteatoda valoka (Chrysanthus, 1975) — New Guinea, New Britain
• Parasteatoda vervoorti (Chrysanthus, 1975) — New Guinea
• Parasteatoda wau (Levi, Lubin & Robinson, 1982) — New Guinea