Adult females may mimic snails, bird droppings and other objects, and so are able to remain exposed during the day time, capturing prey at night.

[5] The ability to produce mimics of the sex pheromones of their prey, particularly those of female moths, seems to have evolved in parallel to web reduction.

[6] In 1892, Eugène Simon created the group Cyrtarachneae, including five genera: Paraplectana, Aranoethra, Pasilobus, Cyrtarachne and Poecilopachys.

[8] Glyptocranium is now accepted as a junior synonym of Mastophora, and in 1931, Cândido Mello-Leitão established the alternative name Mastophoreae for the group.

[9] These three groups, Cyrtarachneae, Mastophoreae and Celaenieae, were treated as tribes, sometimes under the formal names Cyrtarachnini, Mastophorini and Celaeniini.

Emerit in 1978 treated the first two groups as the subfamilies Cyrtarachninae and Mastophorinae (his work did not include genera Simon placed in Celaenieae).

There is a strong tendency towards web reduction, compensated, apparently, by the evolution of aggressive chemical mimicry".

[6] Tanikawa et al. in 2014 included all three of Simon's groups in their broad circumscription of Cyrtarachninae, showing that the resulting taxon was divided into two clades.

Some construct circular "spanning-thread webs", which have a small number of radii and widely spaced sticky threads that do not form spirals.

Finally, some species, as well as male and juvenile female bolas spiders, capture their prey without a web, using their outstretched legs.

[5] The cladogram below, based on Tanikawa et al. (2020), shows the apparent relationships among groups capturing prey in different ways.