Common House Spider Genome Project

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Common house spider (Parasteatoda tepidariorum)

Contact: Alistair McGregor

Researchers involved: 30
Size (or size of nearest relative): 1200 MBp

Keywords (and why important): Evolutionary branching, novel behavior, novel senses, (model organism).

This spider is the primary chelicerate model for evo/devo research in a growing number of labs worldwide. It is easy to culture, and a range of functional tools have been developed, including in situ hybridisation, embryonic and parental RNAi, and transient transformation. A number of transcriptome sequencing projects have been established.

As well as a powerful model for the evolution of development, this species has great potential for understanding other features of spider biology, including venom and silk production. Genetic material is readily available from lab cultures.

Genomic Resources


For the most current version of the assembly, please use 'NCBI BioProject' (find link below). If the assembly is unavailable in the BioProject page (it is still being worked on), you can look under the 'BCM-HGSC data' (find link below) for intermediate versions of the assembly.


Web Apollo: A web-based sequence annotation editor for community annotation

For information about Web Apollo, please contact Monica Poelchau.

Additional Resources

Learn more about common house spiders