Animal Species:Rufous Net-casting Spider

These slender, long-legged spiders have eight eyes, two of which are enormously enlarged and face forwards, looking rather like searchlights.

Rufous Net-Caster Spider, Deinopis subrufa

Bruce Hulbert © Bruce Hulbert

Standard Common Name

Rufous Net-casting Spider


These slender, long-legged spiders have eight eyes, two of which are enormously enlarged and face forwards.. Females are light salmon-brown; the abdomen bears two low humps midway along the sides and has small orange patches underneath. Males are shorter and thinner with spindly legs; the body has dark and light grey longitudinal stripes above and a pair of small white horns on the head over the eyes.

Size range

Female 25 mm; male 10-15 mm


Eastern Australia from Tasmania to southern Queensland in forest, woodland and heathland habitats (Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania).

Distribution by bioregion

Terrestrial Bioregions: Sydney Basin, South East Coastal Plain, South East Corner - NSW, South East Corner - VIC, South Eastern Highlands - ACT, South Eastern Highlands - NSW, South Eastern Highlands - VIC, South Eastern Queensland - NSW, South Eastern Queensland - QLD

What does this mean?


Net-casting spiders are common in bushland and gardens. By day they hide, stick-like, among foliage. By night they build beautiful little webs about the size of a postage stamp and made of thick, bluish-white cribellate silk. The web structure and web spinning behaviour reveal that the net is a highly modified orb web and net casting spiders are descended from orb-weaving ancestors.

Habitat type

Vegetation Habitat: open woodland

What does this mean?

Feeding and Diet

The prey-catching method of net-casting spiders is unique. At night they build a rectangular, postage-stamp-sized web, made with wool-like, entangling silk threads. These little nets are made among low vegetation, usually above a surface across which prey animals are likely to walk (e.g. a broad leaf , a tree trunk or even a house wall). After spinning its web the spider deposits some spots of white faeces on this surface to act as aiming points. The spider hangs head down from a trapeze of silk, holding the net in its front pairs of legs;and there it waits, its enormous eyes watching for prey movement across the white aiming spots. When an insect passes over the white target spots, the spider opens the stretchy web to two or three times its resting size and lunges it downward over the unsuspecting prey. The clinging silk net envelopes the insect, which is then rapidly bitten and wrapped. While eating its catch, the spider may start making a new net for its next meal. Prey animals include cockroaches, ants, spiders and even moths - net-casters seem sensitive to air currents and will lunge the net towards aerial prey. Prey as large as male trapdoor spiders and gryllacridid wood crickets are taken.

Feeding Habits

arthropod-feeder, carnivorous, insectivorous

What does this mean?

Other behaviours and adaptations

The Net-casting spiders' large eyes provide outstanding low-light night vision. Their compound lenses have an F number of 0.58 which means they can concentrate available light more efficiently than a cat (F 0.9) or an owl (F 1.1). The image is focussed onto a large, light-receptive retinal membrane (which is destroyed at dawn and renewed again each night).


Life history mode


What does this mean?

Life cycle

Net-casting spiders mature in summer, with mating and egg-laying taking place into autumn. The male attaches a mating thread to the female's net support lines and jerks it to entice her onto it for mating. The egg sacs are round balls, 9-10 mm in diameter, covered with a tough, closely woven layer of salmon-brown silk flecked with black. The sacs are suspended on vegetation and disguised with twig and leaf litter detritus. Up to four sacs may be produced. The dark brown spiderlings emerge in spring and look like a cloud of little anchors (narrow body and extended front legs) hanging in silk lines above the egg sac. In a few weeks they start building their own tiny nets.

Danger to humans and first aid

No interactions with humans or threats to net-casters have been identified.



What does this mean?


  • Coddington, J.A. (1986). Orb webs in "non-orb" weaving ogre-faced spiders (Araneae: Dinopidae): a question of genealogy. Cladistics 2: 53.
  • Mckeown, K.C. (1963). Australian Spiders. Angus and Robertson.

Dr Mike Gray
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