Preliminary Survey for Spiders on Antigua, West Indies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15362/ijbs.v15i0.109Keywords:
SpidersAbstract
Spiders have a worldwide distribution that comprises all land environments except at the polar extremes. There are now 40,700 named, described species of spiders (Platnick, 2009), thought to represent about one-fifth of the true total. On a faunistic level, the spiders of some regions are reasonably well known, but this is far from the case in the New World tropics, including the West Indies. At present, we have species-level surveys for Cuba (Alayón, 1995), Barbados (Bryant, 1923; Alayón & Horrocks, 2004), St. Vincent & the Grenadines (Simon, 1894; de Silva, Horrocks & Alayón, 2006), Anguilla (Sewlal & Starr, 2006), Nevis (Sewlal & Starr, 2007), St. Kitts (Sewlal, 2008) and Grenada (Sewlal, 2009a), and a family-level list for Trinidad (Cutler, 2005, Sewlal & Cutler, 2003, Sewlal & Alayón, 2007, Sewlal, 2009b). Additional information on the family Pholcidae of some of the Lesser Antilles is provided by Sewlal and Starr (2008). The present short communication serves to expand on Bryant’s (1923) list of 23 species from Antigua and to treat the species distribution on the island with respect to habitats. This survey adds 18 species and 11 families to the list compiled by Bryant (1923).References
Alayón, G. (1995). Lista de las arañas (Arachnida: Araneae) de Cuba. Cocuyo (Havana), 4, 16-26.
Alayón, G., & Horrocks, J. A. (2004). An annotated check-list of the spiders (Araneae) of Barbados. Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, 50, 1-8.
Bryant, E. B. (1923). Report on the spiders collected by the Barbados-Antigua Expedition from the University of Iowa in 1918. University of Iowa Studies in Natural History,10(3), 10-16.
Croft, P., & Pearce-Kelly, P. (1992). Arachnid venoms. In J.E. Cooper, P. Pearce-Kelly, &D.C. Williams (Eds.), Arachnida: Proceedings of a oneday symposium on spiders and their allies (pp. 173-179). Chiron.
Cutler, B. (2005). Synotaxidae, another Trinidadian spider (Araneida) family. Living World: Journal of the Trinidad and Tobago Field Naturalists’ Club, 2005, 49. https://ttfnc.org/livingworld/index.php/lwj/article/view/2005cutler/266
de Silva, M., Horrocks, J.A., & Alayón, G. (2006). The spiders and their relatives of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Mayreau Environmental Development Organization.
Platnick, N. I. (2009). The world spider catalogue, version 9.5. http://research.amnh.org/entomology/spiders/catalog/
Sewlal, J. N. (2008). Preliminary survey for spiders on St. Kitts, West Indies with comparative notes on Nevis. Living World: Journal of the Trinidad and Tobago Field Naturalists’ Club, 2008, 66-69. https://ttfnc.org/livingworld/index.php/lwj/article/view/sewlal2008/341
Sewlal, J. N. (2009a). Preliminary survey for spiders on Grenada, West Indies. Living World: Journal of the Trinidad and Tobago Field Naturalists' Club, 2009, 37-39. https://ttfnc.org/livingworld/index.php/lwj/article/view/sewlal2009b/360
Sewlal, J. N. (2009b). Two more Trinidadian spider (Arachnida: Araneida) families. Living World: Journal of the Trinidad and Tobago Field Naturalists' Club, 2009, 36. https://ttfnc.org/livingworld/index.php/lwj/article/view/sewlal2009/359
Sewlal, J. N., & Alayón, G. (2007). Four more Trinidadian spider (Arachnida: Araneida) families. Living World: Journal of the Trinidad and Tobago Field Naturalists’ Club, 2007, 85. https://ttfnc.org/livingworld/index.php/lwj/article/view/sewlal2007/320
Sewlal, J. N., & Cutler, B. (2003). Annotated list of spider families of Trinidad & Tobago(Araneida). Living World: Journal of the Trinidad and Tobago Field Naturalists’ Club,2003, 9-13. https://ttfnc.org/livingworld/index.php/lwj/article/view/sewlal2003/sewlal2003
Sewlal, J. N., & Starr, C. K. (2010). A first survey of the spiders of Anguilla, West Indies, with comparative notes on St. Kitts and Nevis. Caribbean Journal of Science, 46(1), 116-119. https://doi.org/10.18475/cjos.v46i1.a16
Sewlal, J. N., & Starr, C. K. (2007). Preliminary survey for spiders on Nevis, West Indies. Living World: Journal of the Trinidad and Tobago Field Naturalists’ Club, 2007, 86-87. https://ttfnc.org/livingworld/index.php/lwj/article/view/sewlal2007b/321
Sewlal, J. N., & Starr, C. K. (2008). New records of daddy-longlegs spiders (Pholcidae) from the Lesser Antilles, West Indies. Living World: Journal of the Trinidad and Tobago Field Naturalists’ Club, 2008, 78. https://ttfnc.org/livingworld/index.php/lwj/article/view/2008sewlal/346
Simon, E. (1894). On the spiders of the island of St. Vincent, II. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 1894, 519-526.
Tews, J., Brose. U., Grimm, V., Tielborger, K., Wichmann, M.C., Schwager, M., & Jeltsch, F. (2004). Animal species diversity driven by habitat heterogeneity/diversity: the importance of keystone structures. Journal of Biogeography, 31, 79-92. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.0305-0270.2003.00994.x
