Thelacantha is a 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...

 genus of the Araneidae family with only one described species, T. brevispina. The species is closely related to Gasteracantha, and was synonymized with it in 1859, but revalidated in 1974.

Distribution

The species is found Madagascar

Madagascar

The Republic of Madagascar is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa...

, in southern Asia from India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 to Philippines

Philippines

The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

, Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 and Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

.

Taxonomy

Saito described three other Thelacantha species in 1933, which were later synonymized with T. brevispina. T. brevispina has quite often been misidentified as Gasteracantha mammosa, which is now G. cancriformis.

T. brevispina has gone through a checkered name history:

• Plectana brevispina Doleschall, 1857
• Plectana roseolimbata Doleschall, 1859
• Plectana flavida Doleschall, 1859
• Gasteracantha mammeata Thorell, 1859
• Gasteracantha guttata Thorell, 1859
• Gasteracantha borbonica Vinson, 1863
• Gasteracantha alba Vinson, 1863
• Gasteracantha canningensis Stoliczka, 1869
• Gasteracantha suminata L. Koch, 1871
• Gasteracantha mastoidea L. Koch, 1872
• Stanneoclavis suminata Karsch, 1878
• Stanneoclavis mastoidea Karsch, 1878
• Actinacantha maculata Karsch, 1878
• Gasteracantha brevispina Thorell, 1878
• Gasteracantha observatrix O. P.-Cambridge, 1879
• Gasteracantha mammosa Hasselt, 1882
• Gasteracantha flavida Hasselt, 1882
• Stanneoclavis latronum Simon, 1890
• Gasteracantha brevispina Workman & Workman, 1892
• Gasteracantha mammosa Dahl, 1914
• Gasteracantha sola Saito, 1933
• Gasteracantha sparsa Saito, 1933
• Gasteracantha formosana Saito, 1933
• Gasteracantha brevispina Chrysanthus, 1959
• Gasteracantha brevispina Chrysanthus, 1960
• Gasteracantha (T.) brevispina Chrysanthus, 1971
• Gasteracantha mammosa Yaginuma, 1960
• Thelacantha brevispina Benoit, 1964
• Thelacantha brevispina Emerit, 1974
• Gasteracantha mammosa Tikader & Biswas, 1981
• Gasteracantha mammosa Tikader, 1982
• Gasteracantha mammosa Chikuni, 1989
• Gasteracantha mammosa Feng, 1990
• Gasteracantha mammosa Chen & Gao, 1990
• Gasteracantha mammosa Barrion & Litsinger, 1995
• Gasteracantha mammosa Yin et al., 1997
• Thelacantha brevispina Song, Zhu & Chen, 1999
• Thelacantha brevispina Tanikawa, 2007
• Thelacantha brevispina Tanikawa, 2009

Description

Females grow to a body size of about 6–10 mm, with males reaching a size of 3-5mm.