Dictynidae

Breitling, Rainer, 2021, A completely resolved phylogenetic tree of British spiders (Arachnida: Araneae), Ecologica Montenegrina 46, pp. 1-51 : 9

Dictynidae

Dictynidae and Hahniidae are closely related, and the position of some genera in either of them remains unclear. According to Crews et al. (2020), both Cicurina and Lathys “remain unplaced”. For now, and for the purposes of the preferred tree, placement of Lathys as basal to the remaining Dictynidae and Cicurina basal to Hahniidae seems most justified, as this is roughly compatible with the results presented by Wheeler et al. (2017) and consistent with at least one of the analyses shown in Crews et al. (2020). In the analysis by Crews et al. (2020), Dictyna was recovered as polyphyletic, but here it is assumed that the British representatives form a monophyletic group, as do the other genera in these two families.

The placement of Altella is questionable. Wunderlich (1995a, 2004a) considers the genus a junior synonym of Argenna , indicating at least a close relationship between the two genera. But in the same works he also considers Brigittea (and Emblyna ) as synonyms of Dictyna ; for this to be correct, it would be necessary to considerably expand the scope of Dictyna , to also include the quite distinct genus Nigma .

Given the close morphological similarities (and barcode similarities) between Argenna , Altella and Dictyna s.lat., Argyroneta is placed basal to a clade uniting these two groups, despite results by Crews et al. (2020) that argue for joining Argenna and Argyroneta instead.

The internal topology within Nigma is supported by morphological affinity that indicates a sister group relationship between N. puella and N. flavescens . The same argument applies, with less conviction, in the case of Lathys . The topology within Dictyna s. str. is based on a combination of morphological similarities and barcode data for a subset of the species.