- Animals
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- ›Winged and Once-winged Insects
- ›Beetles
- ›Water, Rove, Scarab, Long-horned, Leaf, and Snout Beetles
- ›Bostrichiform Beetles
- ›Carpet, Powderpost, and Deathwatch Beetles

Deathwatch, Spider, and Wood-borer Beetles
Ptinidae
Spider beetles make up the subfamily Ptininae, in the family Ptinidae. There are approximately 70 genera and 600 species in the subfamily, with about 12 genera and 70 species in North America north of Mexico.
Spider beetles have round bodies with long, slender legs. Many species are flightless, either in females only or both sexes. They are generally 1–5 mm long, and reproduce at the rate of two to three generations per year. They are so named because of a resemblance to spiders. Some species have long legs, antennae that can seem like an additional pair of legs, and a body shape that may appear superficially like that of a spider.
10 branches of this family, most-observed first

Death-watch Beetles
subfamilyAnobiinae

Spider Beetles
subfamilyPtininae

Xyletininae
subfamilyXyletininae

Dorcatominae
subfamilyDorcatominae

Ernobiinae
subfamilyErnobiinae

Mesocoelopodinae
subfamilyMesocoelopodinae

Ptilininae
subfamilyPtilininae

Eucradinae
subfamilyEucradinae

Dryophilinae
subfamilyDryophilinae

Alvarenganiellinae
subfamilyAlvarenganiellinae
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
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geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Ptinidae in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 82167.