orbiculariae is a potential clade of araneomorph spiders, uniting two groups that make orb webs. phylogenetic analyses based on morphological characters have generally recovered this clade; analyses based on dna have regularly concluded that the group is not monophyletic. the issue relates to the origin of orb webs: whether they evolved early in the evolutionary history of entelegyne spiders, with many groups subsequently losing the ability to make orb webs, or whether they evolved later, with fewer groups having lost this ability. , the weight of the evidence strongly favours the non-monophyly of "orbiculariae" and hence the early evolution of orb webs, followed by multiple changes and losses.