3 local catalogs, 258 species/morphospecies, 32 families and 790 photographs
Introduction. About 1400 species in 66 families has been recorded from Colombia, of the circa 13500 species in 95 families of spiders that are currently known to exist in the Neotropical Region. Colombia is an extremely rich country and, at the same time, unknown regarding to its fauna and especially its spiders. The country, despite its enormous lack of knowledge and research on this topic, is already widely recognized as one of the richest countries in biodiversity in the world, and spiders do not escape this reality. Because of the lack of comprehensive studies of spiders of the country, there are not keys to genera or species in almost all groups presently distributed nor Colombia or other neighborhood countries. That's the main reason why this project started!
The 'Spiders of Colombia' project consisted of a web repository of photographs taken by the author (and colleagues, where it is noted) over his career as a volunteer researcher or associate researcher of the Institute of Natural Sciences, Universidad Nacional de Colombia. The photographs have been taken on many occasions, related with many taxonomic projects, from material deposited in both national and international collections, especially ICN-Ar, with the aim of providing the author with an idea about the morphological and taxonomic diversity of Neotropical spiders to be applied especially to the spiders of Colombia, and latter, the other countries of the Tropical Andean Region, one of the richest regions in biodiversity in the world but at the same time one of the most unknown!
Methods. Due to the underfunded nature of this project, and in general of the author and of any project with spiders in the region, the included photographic material was taken some times with professional and average stereo-microscopes to cell phones or personal photograph cameras; so, the quality of the images of many of the morphospecies will depend on this. Even so, they are included here with the intention of complementing the state of knowledge of many groups of spiders present in the country as well as helping their identification by the arachno-community, collaborating in the education of the general public as well as of decision makers about the enormous importance of tropical spiders in our lives, landscapes and ecosystems, and finally and not less important, for the enjoyment of every spider lover!
Many of the photographic material here included also come from some of the projects that the author has led or is leading in different territories of Colombia, in private or civil society nature reserves, private lands and/or royal roads. In this sense, this project seeks to help both professionals and amateurs, arachno lovers, the general public or really anyone who wishes to learn more about the spider fauna present not only in Colombia but by extension to other countries in the new world, and especially those of the ArachnoTrAC region.
Most of the specimens herein included were photographed dorsally, at least, and also includes pics of reproductive characters and other important views or characters that author considered as that. In addition, all species/morphospecies have an ArachnoTrAC code that could be used by user to refer directly to the species of interest.
The list of collections is as follows*:
COLOMBIA: ANDESIN (Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá D.C.); CIUQ (Universidad del Quindío, Armenia); CATAC (Instituto de Investigaciones Amazónicas SINCHI, Leticia); CIPNNE (Centro de Investigaciones del PNN Los Estoraques); IAvH (Instituto Alexander von Humboldt, Villa de Leyva); ICESI (Universidad ICESI, Cali); MCNUP (Universidad de Pamplona, Pamplona); ICN-Ar (Insituto de Ciencias Naturales de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia); MPUJ-ENT (Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá D.C.); MUSENUV (Universidad del Valle, Cali); UDA (Universidad del Atlántico, Barranquilla); UNIMAG (Universidad del Magdalena, Santa Marta); UNIMINUTO (Universidad Minuto de Dios, Bogotá); UNIC (Universidad de Cartagena, Cartagena), and UTC (Universidad Tecnológica del Chocó, Quibdó).
INTERNATIONAL: AMNH (American Museum of Natural History, New York); CAFC (Universidad Autónoma de México, México D.F.); CAS (California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco); CIBNOR (Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas del Noroeste, La Paz); CNAN (Universidad Autónoma de Méxicom México D.F.); FCE (Universidad de la República, Montevideo); FZB (Fundacao Zoobotánica do Rio Grande do Sul, Museu de Ciencias Naturais, Porto Alegre); IBSP (Instituto Butantan, São Paulo); INABIO (Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad, Buenos Aires); MACN (Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales, Buenos Aires); MCTP (Museu de Ciencias e Tecnologia, Pontificia Universidade Católica, Porto Alegre); MCZ (Museum of Comparative Zoology, Cambridge); MNRJ (Museu Nacional do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro); MPEG (Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, Belem); MUSM (Universidad Mayor de San Marcos, Lima); MZSP (Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo); UEES (Colección biológica de la Universidad Espíritu Santo, Guayaquil); UFL (University of Florida, Gainesville); UCV (Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas), USFQ (Univerrsidad San Francisco de Quito, Quito), and UP (Universidad de Panamá, Panamá).
Be very welcomed and if you have questions, want to learn, want to propose a scientific, educational, science-for-the-public or any other type of project, or require the use of any of the images published here or the information associated to them, please Contact.
¿How to navigate on this spider species repository?
There are three main forms to find spider species/morphospecies in this project:
By Niputidae project, which are very few morphospecies with unknown family taxo position, at least at first sight for the author.
By General project, which contains ALL the species/morphospecies treated by author, cladistically ordered group per group. It is important to note that the clades shown here, where the families are organized, have been derived partially from graphs published by Ramírez et al. (2014), Wheeler et al. (2017), Wood et al. (2018), Azevedo et al. (2022), Eskov & Marusik (2023), Kulkarni et al. (2023); all discussed in Hill (2023). As you can see, each grouping (i.e. Synspermiata+, Araneoids+, Cribellates+, etc.) is followed by a '+' or '-', which means that some families per group have been added or subtracted, with the aim of better organizing these groups and making navigation easier. In each group a better explanation will be presented for each case.
By Local Catalogs, which are local, regional or natural reserve spider catalogs made by the author for particular faunas, as example: Spiders of Upper San Juan river, Spiders of Sugamuxi Province, etc.
Note.
Click on any project for the photographs of the species/morphospecies.
Throughout this catalog or repository it will be possible to find some specimens that, despite being juveniles and not having developed sexual characteristics, they've been included because their particular somatic characteristics (i.e. colors, sizes, spines, etc.) that allow them to be separated as a different (and comparable) morphospecies, and also, because they belong to permanent projects that the author is carrying out in some local projects (or local catalogs), and in this way, it will be possible in the future to find their adults.
Any correction? Any idea? Any project? Any opinion? Please Contact as necessary!
References.
Azevedo, G.H.F., Bougie, T., Carboni, M., Hedin, M. & Ramírez, M.J. (2021). Combining genomic, phenotypic and Sanger sequencing data to elucidate the phylogeny of the two-clawed spiders (Dionycha). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 166(107327): 1-14.
Eskov, K.Y. & Marusik, Y.M. (2023). "Morphological" and "molecular" systems of araneoids: an attempt at harmonization with a subsequent testing of the obtained cladogram using web-building characters (Aranei: Araneoidea). Arthropoda Selecta 32(3): 337-356.
Hill, D.E.(2023). Practical issues related to cladistics and the classification of spiders. Peckhamia 303.1: 1-12.
Kulkarni, S., Wood, H.M. & Hormiga, G. (2023). Advances in the reconstruction of the spider tree of life: a roadmap for spider systematics and comparative studies. Cladistics 39(6): 479-532.
Ramírez, M.J. (2014). The morphology and phylogeny of dionychan spiders (Araneae: Araneomorphae). Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 390: 1-374.
Wheeler, W.C., Coddington, J.A., Crowley, L.M., Dimitrov, D., Goloboff, P.A., Griswold, C.E., Hormiga, G., Prendini, L., Ramírez, M.J., Sierwald, P., Almeida-Silva, L., Álvarez-Padilla, F., Arnedo, M.A., Benavides S., L.R., Benjamin, S.P., Bond, J.E., Grismado, C.J., Hasan, E., Hedin, M., Izquierdo, M.A., Labarque, F.M., Ledford, J., Lopardo, L., Maddison, W.P., Miller, J.A., Piacentini, L.N., Platnick, N.I., Polotow, D., Silva-Dávila, D., Scharff, N., Szűts, T., Ubick, D., Vink, C.J., Wood, H.M. & Zhang, J. (2016). The spider tree of life: phylogeny of Araneae based on target-gene analyses from an extensive taxon sampling. Cladistics 33(6): 574-616.
Wood, H.M., González, V.L., Lloyd, M., Coddington, J. & Scharff, N. (2018). Next-generation museum genomics: Phylogenetic relationships among palpimanoid spiders using sequence capture techniques (Araneae: Palpimanoidea). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 127: 907-918.