Friula

{{Short description|Genus of spiders}} {{Speciesbox | image = Friula wallacei by O. Pickard-Cambridge 1896.png | taxon = Friula wallacei | parent_authority = O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1897<ref name=NMBE /> | authority = O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1897 }}

'''''Friula''''' is a genus of orb-weaver spiders containing the single species, '''''Friula wallacei'''''. It was first described by O. Pickard-Cambridge in 1897,<ref name=Pick1897>{{cite journal| last=Pickard-Cambridge| first=O.| year=1897| title=On some new and little-known spiders (Araneidae).| journal=Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London| pages=1006–1012| volume=64| issue=4, for 1896| doi=10.1111/j.1096-3642.1896.tb03096.x}}</ref> and has been found only on Borneo.<ref name=NMBE>{{cite web| title=Gen. Friula O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1897| website=World Spider Catalog| accessdate=2019-07-21| publisher=Natural History Museum Bern| url=http://wsc.nmbe.ch/genus/321/Friula}}</ref> Pickard-Cambridge based his description and drawing on a specimen collected by Alfred Russel Wallace in Sarawak between November 1854 and January 1856.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Hale |first1=Ray |title=Sarawak, spiders and a 150-year-old mystery |url=https://www.theborneopost.com/2017/08/20/sarawak-spiders-and-a-150-year-old-mystery/ |accessdate=22 July 2019 |work=The Borneo Post |date=20 August 2017}}</ref> Pickard-Cambridge personally confirmed with Wallace that Wallace "was the captor of this spider, and in the locality mentioned."<ref name=Pick1897/> In 2017, the Alfred Russel Wallace Memorial Fund published a call for observations of this species, stating that no specimens of the species have been collected since Wallace's and that his specimen, housed at Oxford University, is the only known specimen in the world.<ref>{{cite web |title=Wanted DEAD or ALIVE! [But a photo will do] |url=http://wallacefund.info/content/wanted-dead-or-alive-photo-will-do# |website=The Alfred Russel Wallace Website |publisher=The Alfred Russel Wallace Memorial Fund |accessdate=22 July 2019}}</ref>

==Description==

Pickard-Cambridge declared that the species is allied to the orb-weaver genus ''Gasteracantha''. He described and illustrated two enormous, club-like spines, each longer than the width of the abdomen and crowned with "six or seven small conical prominences." He wrote, "Although an unmistakably gasteracanthid spider, it seems to me impossible to include this remarkable form in any genus as yet characterized."<ref name=Pick1897/>

==References== {{Reflist}}

Category:Araneidae Category:Monotypic Araneidae genera Category:Spiders of Asia