Where Funnel-web spiders live
A suburban gully - ideal funnel-web habitat. Photo: M Gray © Australian Museum.
Funnel-web spiders live in the moist forest regions of the east coast and highlands of Australia from Tasmania to north Queensland. They are also found in the drier open forests of the Western Slopes of the Great Dividing Range and South Australia's Gulf ranges. Funnel-webs of the genus Atrax have a much smaller distribution than do the more diverse members of the genus Hadronyche. The Sydney Funnel-web Spider, Atrax robustus, is found from Newcastle to Nowra and west as far as Lithgow in New South Wales.
Within Hadronyche several groups of related species are currently recognised. These species groups are:
- cerberea group, found entirely south of the Hunter River into Tasmania, except for a single species, the Northern Tree-dwelling Funnel-web Spider, H. formidabilis, the largest funnel-web spider (body length up to 5 cm)
- infensa group, found north of the Hunter River region into south-east Queensland
- adelaidensis group, isolated in the dry forests of the Gulf Ranges of South Australia; the only trap-door building funnel-web spider
- illawarra group, a single species isolated in the wet forests of the Illawarra region of New South Wales
- lamington group, several species confined to discrete rainforest areas in New South Wales and Queensland
- anzes group, a single, far northern outlier species in rainforests north of Cairns, north Queensland.
In Sydney suburbia, funnel-web spiders mostly live in the moist upland forest areas of the Hornsby Plateau to the north and the Woronora Plateau to the south, where sheltered burrow habitats abound in both bushland and gardens. The dry, flatter areas of western Sydney and the Cumberland Plain have fewer funnel-webs, their numbers picking up again in the foothills of the Blue Mountains. Two funnel-web species are common in the Sydney region - the Sydney Funnel-web Spider (Atrax robustus) and the Southern Tree-dwelling Funnel-web Spider (Hadronyche cerberea)
While Sydney Funnel-webs were never restricted to the leafy north shore region as some would have it, Sydney real estate does give a rough guide to funnel-web density - the more expensive the area the greater the funnel-web population (the dry, sandy eastern suburbs excepted).
