Mallos gregalis

---

title: "Mallos gregalis" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["dictynidae", "endemic-spiders-of-mexico", "spiders-described-in-1909"] description: "Species of spider" topic_path: "geography/mexico" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mallos_gregalis" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Species of spider ::

| image = | image_caption = | taxon = Mallos gregalis | authority = (Simon, 1909) | synonyms = Coenothele gregalis Simon, 1909

Mallos gregalis is a spider species belonging to the family Dictynidae. It is endemic to Mexico.

Discovered by French naturalists in the previous century, M. gregalis were again brought to light in the 1970s by Wes Burgess through his research on their social lifestyle. M. gregalis live in groups containing thousands of individuals together on a sheet-like spider web. Like other social spiders, the unique qualities of *M. gregalis''' web help make their social lifestyle possible. Their web preferentially transmits the vibrations of flies caught in the web while dampening out the vibrations caused by other spiders, thus allowing the M. gregalis spiders to distinguish between the prey and each other. The smell of previously eaten fly bodies helps attract other flies to *M. gregalis''′ web.

References

References

1. (March 1976). "Social spiders". Scientific American.
2. Burgess, J. Wesley. (1978). "Arachnology, 7th International Congress". Published for the Zoological Society of London by Academic Press.
3. (1976). "Spider webs: Design and engineering". Interdisciplinary Science Reviews.
4. (1978). "Spider webs: Design and engineering". Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau.
5. (1979). "Web-signal processing for tolerance and group predation in the social spider ''Mallos gregalis'' Simon". Animal Behaviour.
6. (1987). "Symbiosis between social spiders and yeast: the role in prey attraction". [[Psyche (entomology journal).
7. World Spider Catalog. (2017). "''Mallos gregalis'' (Simon, 1909)". Natural History Museum Bern.

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::