Caucasian Spiders

I spent the time between late March and mid-July 2009 in Georgia, starting my dissertation on the canopy spiders of Colchic forests in western Georgia - Kintrishi Reserve and Mtirala NP. When I was not in the field, I worked in the arachnological collection of Janashia Georgian National Museum. This collection comprises more than 100 large glass containers with vials of spider material - mostly from the country Georgia and mostly material collected by Dmitri Charitonov or Tamara Mkheidze between the 1930s and 1970s.

The arachnological collection is part of the Zoological Section of the museum. Together with her team of zoologists and assistants, Vera Pkhakadze leds this section. Currently, most work focusses on the renovation process of the museum and everyday curating activities.

During my stay at the museum I looked through most of the material with determination labels (appr. 1000 vials) and wrote a preliminary catalog of the arachnological collection. Please read the Readme PDF first, before scanning the catalog files containing the material lists.

1. ReadmeCatalogTbilisiMuseum.pdf - the Readme PDF

2. CatalogTbilisiMuseum.pdf - Catalog of the Main Collection

3. CharitonovSystemTbilisiMuseum.pdf - Catalog of Dmitri Charitonov’s collection in Tbilisi

4. TypeCollectionTbilisiMuseum.pdf - Catalog of the type material in Tbilisi