Wikipedia
Herennia is a genus of spiders in the Nephilidae family with Australasian distribution. While two species have been known since the 19th century, nine new species were described in 2005. Spiders in this genus are sometimes called coin spiders.
While H. multipuncta is invasive and synanthropic, all other known species are endemic to islands.
Like in the related genus Nephilengys, the much smaller males mutilate and sever their pedipalps, which are often found stuck in the epigynum or female genital openings. It is suggested that they act as mating plugs to prevent other males from mating with the female and thereby ensure the paternity of offspring. The males cannot mate subsequently and such "eunuch" individuals continue to stay near the female.
The gens Herennia was a plebeian family at Rome. Members of this gens are first mentioned among the Italian nobility during the Samnite Wars, and they appear in the Roman Fasti beginning in 93 BC. In Imperial times they held a number of provincial offices and military commands. The empress Herennia Etruscilla was a descendant of this gens.
The extensive mercantile interests of the Herennii are attested by several authors, who describe the family's participation in the Sicilian and African trade, and especially their involvement in purchasing and exporting silphium, a medicinal herb of great value in antiquity, which grew only along a short stretch of the African coast, and defied all attempts to cultivate it. The Herennian interest in trade is attested by the surname Siculus (a Sicilian), the settlement of a merchant named Herennius at Leptis Magna, the legend of the founding of a temple to Hercules at Rome, and a coin of the gens bearing a representation of the goddess Pietas on the obverse, and on the reverse Amphinomus carrying his father, a reference to the legend of the two brothers of Catana, who escaped an eruption of Mount Aetna carrying their aged parents.