Cribellum

Cribellum literally means "little sieve", and in biology the term generally applies to anatomical structures in the form of tiny perforated plates.

[citation needed] Today, it is believed that the precursor of all Araneomorphae was cribellate (symplesiomorphy), and that this function was lost in some araneomorph spiders secondarily (Coddington & Levy, 1991).

In Austrochilidae, the cribellum is developed only in the second nymphal stage, so the ecribellate and cribellate conditions change during the spider ontogenesis.

However, that fauna may be an example of high diversity in Australian animals that are only relicts in other regions of the world, like the marsupials (Coddington & Levy, 1991).

Cribellate taxa are not very speciose, and for nearly all cribellate-ecribellate sister clades the cribellate lineage is less diverse (Coddington & Levy, 1991), for example: 22 families of araneomorph spiders, namely Agelenidae, Amaurobiidae, Amphinectidae, Austrochilidae, Ctenidae, Deinopidae, Desidae, Dictynidae, Eresidae, Filistatidae, Gradungulidae, Hypochilidae, Miturgidae, Neolanidae, Nicodamidae, Oecobiidae, Psechridae, Stiphidiidae, Tengellidae, Titanoecidae, Uloboridae and Zoropsidae contain at least some cribellate spiders (Griswold et al. 1999).