Of the nearly 40,000 known species of spiders, there are more than 20 species where males and females live together in large groups, even thousands together.
Some African and Asian species of the genus Stegodyphus are such that the animals can live together and together make a large, three-dimensional web and jointly take care of its maintenance. Such a web can envelop an entire tree.
These spiders collectively take care of raising the young and divide the food that comes into the web.
And recently, a previously unknown species of sociable spider, Theridion nigroannulatum, was discovered in Ecuador, South America. The community of this species is reminiscent of other highly social insects, such as bees and ants.
Class division and division of labor
The females are divided into two size groups, which is probably due to the fact that there is a class division and a division of labor, similar to bees.
Finally, it can be mentioned that there are spiders that work together across species boundaries, where the smaller spiders live on prey that gets stuck in the web of the larger species.
This applies, for example, to Argyrodes, which lives in the web of a much larger species, called Nephila.
The small spiders get to eat the smallest insects, but in return they do the big spiders a favor by cleaning everything that is so small from the web that it does not take the larger species to put the prey in its mouth.
