Caucasian Spiders

Kadir Bogaç Kunt, Altuɠ Kiziltuɠ and Yuri Marusik went on a field trip throughout Turkey, collecting spiders in Marmara Region, Aegean Region, Mediterranean Region, Black Sea Region and in the Central Anatolian Region. Between 11th and 14th I joined them, coming from my study areas in western Georgia, taking part in the excursion in the Eastern Black Sea Region around Artvin during the last three days of this field trip.

The participants spent the days either travelling to remote habitats of spiders and other Arachnids or collecting specimens in interesting places. Collecting was accompanied by valuable exchange of knowledge concerning the most prospective collecting methods. In the evenings, such discussions were sometimes extended to thorough evaluation of the latest preservation fluids from Turkey and Georgia.

As the main result, the participants of the 1. IFTT enriched their collections by several hundreds of new specimens, which will most probably lead to new insights into the Turkish arachnofauna in the near future. Some new family records for Turkey are already certain …

Furthermore, I am sure, the cooperation between the participants will be more intense in the future, e. g. in joint taxonomical studies, field trips or during the suggested 1. Black Sea Arachnological Meeting in Trabzon 2010. Also, I might extend my study of spider communities in Colchic forests from Georgia to Turkey.

Logunov, D. V.; Guseinov, E. F. (2008): A faunistic review of the spider family Philodromidae (Aranei) of Azerbaijan. Arthropoda Selecta 17 (1-2): 117-131. (full-text PDF).

I just received a message from Yuri Marusik concerning a database entry: 

>I found that Paracoelotes spasskyi is missing from Azerbaijan in your catalogue, while it
> is present in Mikhailov’s. This species was at least reported by Dunin  (1989).

>Yrs, Yura

I will change this in the database as soon as possible but it might take a couple of months because of larger work on the database.

Dmitri Logunov just pointed out to me, that all articles published in Arthropoda Selecta are available as PDF downloads via the British Arachnological Society (tab ‘Hosted Sites’).

I uploaded a new article on two new Drassodes species from Dagestan: Drassodes archibensis Ponomarev & Alieva, 2008 and D. dagestanus Ponomarev & Alieva, 2008.

Ponomarev, A. V. & Alieva, S. V. (2008): New species of spiders of the genus Drassodes Westring, 1851 (Aranei: Gnaphosidae) of Dagestan. Caucasian Entomological Bulletin. 4 (3): 255-257

There is a new article by Mykola Kovblyuk on the genus Micaria in the Crimea. It includes references to material from Azerbaijan.

Kovblyuk, M. M. & Nadolny, A. A. (2007): The spider genus Micaria Westring, 1851 in the Crimea (Aranei: Gnaphosidae). Arthropoda Selecta. 16 (4): 215-236 

I scanned and uploaded an old article by Eugene Simon:

Simon, E. (1899): Araneae caucasicae. Museum Caucasicum 1, 477-478. [full-text PDF]

Servane Laine found a beautiful female of Araneus quadratus in Svaneti (near Mestia) in September, 2008 - and took a picture of it.

Here it is …

A new article on West-Caucasian spiders appeared. The pdf is available in the download section and here:

Kovblyuk, M. M. & Ponomarev, A. V. (2008): New and interesting spiders (Aranei: Agelenidae, Corinnidae, Gnaphosidae, Nemesiidae, Thomisidae) from the West Caucasus. Caucasian Entomological Bulletin. 4 (2): 143-154 [full-text PDF]

Last year, the Georgian arachnologist Tamara Mkheidze died in Tbilisi at the age of 91. In remembrance of her, obituaries have been written in the past months. Here are the citations and a pdf of the German obituary:

• Marusik Y. M. (in press): Tamara Severyanovna Mkheidze 1915-2007. – Arthropoda Selecta 16 (3)
• Marusik Y. & S. Otto (in press): 70 years of Arachnology in Georgia: Tamara S. Mkheidze (1915-2007). Newsl. Br. arachnol. Soc.
• Otto Stefan, Vera Pkhakadze, Arnold Gegechkori (2008): 70 Jahre Arachnologie in Georgien: Tamara S. Mkheidze (1915 – 2007), Arachnologische Mitteilungen 35: 72-75. [full-text pdf (in German)]