Colossendeidae
family of sea spiders
Colossendeidae is a family of sea spiders (class Pycnogonida). This family includes more than 100 species distributed among six genera. These sea spiders inhabit the deep sea mostly but are also found in shallower waters, especially in Antarctic and Arctic waters.
Description
Most colossendeids can grow to giant sizes as adults, far larger than any other sea spiders. The largest sea spider, Colossendeis colossea, can reach a leg span of 70 cm, whereas the subfamily Hedgpethiinae includes tiny species with leg span of less than 1 cm. Like most sea spiders, colossendeids usually have four pairs of legs in adults, except for three species, Decolopoda australis, D. qasimi, and Pentacolossendeis reticulata, with five leg pairs, and one species, Dodecolopoda mawsoni, with six leg pairs.
Colossendeids typically have no chelifores, except in the extra-legged species which have robust pincers and 2-segmented scapes. The palps and ovigers are present in both males and females, they are elongated with basal processes located very close to each other. The palps have 8 or 9 segments (historically 9 or 10 as the basal process was once thought to be a segment) while the ovigers have 10 segments. Each oviger ends in a strong terminal claw and compound spines arranged in fields or rows on a well formed strigilis (hook-like distal segments).
“Colossendeidae” enters the record as family of sea spiders. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Colossendeidae, family and spiders can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q147237. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Colossendeidae” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.