Intro

The catalog of Arachnids from Tropical Andean Countries (ArachnoTrAC: Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia) born as an evolution from the Catalogue of Arachnids from Colombia - AracnidsCo (2015-2020)!

The region of Tropical Andean Countries (in South America) comprises a huge strip of territory crossed entirely by the Andes mountain range, which has provided endless ecosystem variables and thermal floors that have resulted in its enormous biological diversity. The Tropical Andes are currently considered one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet.

Herbert Levi would say for himself, in 1996: "In the course of revising South American Araneidae I found that in most genera about 30% of the species are previously known, 70% are new”. With this illustrative phrase, one of the great masters of arachnology would express his surprise and awe about his knowledge of the real diversity of araneids (also evident in other groups of spiders) present not only in the tropical Andean region, but in the rest of the South American subcontinent.

Therefore, this catalog is built from the intense feeling of ignorance about one of the most popular and species-rich groups of animals in the world: the arachnids! This makes them not only a mega-diverse group, but also one with a very wide distribution, since they have been recorded in practically all regions of the planet, from sea level to more than 6500 meters in the Himalayas, from xerophytic and desert regions to jungles and very humid forests, from coastlines to Andean Páramo ecosystems; from Island ecosystems to inner continental regions, etc. Arachnids are only absent (in most of cases) where ice is the only landscape, like Antarctica or the top of Andean mountains.

As it is in the public domain, science is not built from scratch. It is a joint effort of naturalists, researchers and scientists, from this and previous generations whom, from their local, regional or global efforts, have allowed the construction of knowledge that has brought us to this moment of science in history. 

Of course, this project is no exception. In this way, and compiling the information available up to that moment, the author of this online catalogue, William Galvis, establishes the first part of the project (2010-2014) with the list of arachnids officially reported from Colombia, which was published later in the online Catalog of Arachnids of Colombia (AracnidsCo) in 2015.

Subsequently, and with the aim of making the project somewhat more natural (at least in biogeographical terms), the decision was made to include information for the other countries in the region, which normally share extensive biogeographical zones with Colombia or between them, such as Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia that share, to a greater or lesser extent, biogeographic regions such as the Andes, Amazon, Caribbean, Chocó, Coastal Deserts, among others!

Chronologically, the main regional catalogs used for the construction and fed back of this project are: Mello-Leitão (1941), Caporiacco (1955), Flórez-D. & Sánchez-C. (1995), Flórez (2001), Kury (2003), Harvey (2003), Ceballos & Flórez (2007) and Barriga & Moreno (2013). All the complete list, which is constantly growing, can be revised in References.

In this way, from the middle of the 20th century, Norman Platnick adapted in physical form, and even more importantly in on-line form, the information compiled historically by authors such as Bonnet, Roewer and Brignoli: the taxonomic information on spiders of the world, which he published for the first time in history as the web of the World Catalog of Spiders. Resource that was substantially used by this project, which continues to be supervised and managed by The World Spider Catalog Association (WSCA) based in Bern (Switzerland). Here you can find more info on this.