What’s a Spider? Designation of the Neotype for the First Animal Species Ever Described, Araneus angulatus Clerck 1757 (Araneae: Araneidae)

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  What’s a Spider? Designation of the Neotype for the First Animal Species Ever Described, Araneus angulatus Clerck 1757 (Araneae: Araneidae) Abstract We designate a neotype for the Eurasian spider species Araneus angulatus Clerck, 1757, thereby fixing the objective application of the species name, the genus name Araneus Clerck 1757, the family name Araneidae Clerck 1757, and the superfamily name Araneoidea Clerck 1757. By etymology and arachnological tradition, it also unofficially fixes the application of the ordinal name Araneae Clerck 1757 and thus answers the uncontroversial question, “What’s a spider?” A. angulatus also happens to be historically the first animal species ever described because Clerck (1757) has priority over Linnaeus (1758). Neotype designation is justified for three reasons: the syntypes of A. angulatus are lost; “ A. angulatus ” contains significant COI sequence divergence, potentially representing intraspecific variation, misidentifications, or as many...

Refining spider guilds for arid environments

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Refining spider guilds for arid environments


ABSTRACT

Guilds have been used to assess how vegetation or environmental perturbations influence the community structure of animal communities. Spiders use a variety of hunting strategies. In arid environments they are the main predators of arthropods. Despite this, spider guilds have not been studied in desert ecosystems. Our study was carried out in one area of the Chihuahuan Desert. We used ramp-type traps and manual collection to capture the spiders. After identifying the specimens caught, we used a classification based on 20 and 23 traits to group the species into guilds. We used new traits for classification (eg horizontal web, triangular web, vertical web, threads coming out of the retreat). As a result, we obtained 11 guilds. Some species of the same family (e.g Gnaphosidae, Oxyopidae, Philodromidae, Theridiidae, Thomisidae) were positioned in different guilds. In addition to the classification, we provide information on the natural history of the species found. This information can be used to understand the differences between spider communities in desert vegetation types and those in other biomes.

Desales-Lara, M. A., Corcuera, P., Jiménez, M. L., & Villegaz-Guzmán, G. A. (2024). Refining spider guilds for arid environments. Journal of Natural History, 58(21–24), 702–721. https://doi.org/10.1080/00222933.2024.2355364