Caucasian Spiders

Tamara Mkheidze

Stefan Otto — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 18:36:34 +0000

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)]

New literature

Stefan Otto — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 09:14:01 +0000

Umit Kebapci just sent me a link to an article and a citation relating to spiders of NE Turkey (click on citation):

Bayram, A., Sancak, Z., Danisman, T., & Corak, I. (2007): Spider Fauna of the Argyropiformia Group of the North-East Blacksea Region (Superfamily: Argyropiformia, Araneae). Journal of Applied Biological Sciences. 1 (2): 13-17 [external link]

Bayram, A. & Varol, M. I. (2003): On Poecilochroa variana, recently collected in Turkey for the first time (Araneae: Gnaphosidae). Zoology in the Middle East. (30): 101-104

New literature

Stefan Otto — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:04:43 +0000

A former Caucasus endemic species is now known from the Crimea, too.

Kovblyuk, M. & Nadolny, A. (2007): Harpactea spasskyi (Aranei, Dysderidae) from the Crimea. Vest. Zool. 41 (6): 547-548 [full-text PDF]

Caucasian Arachnology

Stefan Otto — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 17:29:15 +0000

The first introduction on Caucasian arachnology by Marusik et al. (2005) shed a first light on the more than 140 years old history of Caucasian arachnology, distinguishing four phases of research: (1) beginning research (1866-1938), (2) pre-Dunin (1939-1978), (3) Dunin (1979-1998) and (4) modern (1999-today). Today I provide some more information on the intensity of spider research in the Caucasus - measured in number of publications per decade.

Based on the bibliography more than 200 articles concerning Caucasian spiders have so far been published. I think I didn’t miss many. In the beginning phase of Caucasian arachnology only ten articles were published between 1866 and 1929. In the next - pre-Dunin - phase a peak can be observed between 1930 and 1949 - based mostly on the efforts of Dmitri Charitionov, Sergei Spassky and Tamara Mkheidze. Starting with a setback in publication numbers in the 1950s - and including the Dunin- and modern phase of Caucasian arachnology a steady and strong increase in research effort on Caucasian spiders can be observed.

One can also see in the graph that this trend of increasing research hardly slowed down in recent years as publication numbers still increased from 2000 to 2007. Today we live in the most productive phase of Caucasian arachnology ever - based on the sheer number of articles.

It would be most interesting to include the numbers of known Caucasian species per decade as well as the number of species described as new species from the Caucasus per decade as well. Based on such data we might be able to make some educated guesses on the number of spider species in the Caucasus. I hope to be able to do so when we finished migration to the new Ontowiki content management system in April …

New download

Stefan Otto — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 17:04:51 +0000

I uploaded an article:

Kulczynski, L. (1895): Araneae a Dre G. Horvath in Bessarabia, Chersoneso Taurico, Transcaucasia et Armenia Russica collectae. Termesz. Füzet.. 18 (1/2): 3-38. [full-text PDF 3.9 MB]

New download

Stefan Otto — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:16:06 +0000

I digitalized L. Koch’s (1878) study on Caucasian spiders.

Koch, L. (1878): Kaukasische Arachnoideen. in Schneider, O. (ed): Naturwissenschaftliche Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Kaukasusländer auf Grund seiner Sammelausbeute. pp. 9-71. (full-text PDF [5.9 MB])

Missing database entry

Stefan Otto — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 23:30:38 +0000

I just noticed the species Amaurobius fenestralis (Ström, 1768) is not listed in the database although it has been recorded from Azerbaijan (Dunin, 1988, cit. in Mikhailov, 1997). Sorry, my mistake!

This will be fixed when we migrate to the new Ontowiki software tool in april. Up to then I will post all mistakes or missing entries here when I notice them. Please make a comment on this page or write me an email in case you find anything weird in the database so I can put it on my to-do-list for the new database.

New literature II

Stefan Otto — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 14:15:50 +0000

A new article from M. Kovblyuk, relating to a species also distributed in the Caucasus, is now available:

Nadolny, A. A. & Kovblyuk, M. M. (2006): Carpathonesticus borutzkyi, the first record of Nesticidae from the Crimea (Aranei: Nesticidae). Arthropoda Selecta. 15 (4) : 291-294 [full-text PDF]

New literature I

Stefan Otto — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 11:41:35 +0000

Yesterday I received a number of reprints from A. Ponomarev. Among them are three articles from 2007 concerning the spider fauna of the Western Caucasus (Caucasian Biospheric Reserve) and the first article ever on spiders of Dagestan. All articles are available as PDF files in the list below or in the download section.

Articles of A. Ponomarev now available as PDF files:

Minoranski, V. A. (1988): Material on the spider fauna (Aranei) of Checheno-Ingusheti [in Russian]. Fauna i ekologia paukobraznykh, Perm. : 34-42 [full-text PDF]

Minoranski, V. A., Ponomarev, A. V., Slusajev, V. V., & Gramotenko, V. P. (1984): On the spider fauna (Aranei) of Checheno-Ingusheti [in Russian]. Isv. Sev.-Kavk. nautsh. zentra vycsch. schk. Estestv. nauki. 4 : 76-80 [full-text PDF]

Ponomarev, A. V. & Khalidov, A. K. (2007): On the spider fauna (Aranei) of Dagestan [in Russian]. Vestnik Yushnovo Nautshnovo Zentra (Russ. Akad. Nauk). 3 (2) : 72-78 [full-text PDF]

Ponomarev, A. V. & Mikhailov, K. G. (2007): Addition to the Fauna of Spiders (Aranei) of the Russian Caucasus (in Russian). Studies of the Southern Scientific Center fo the Russian Academy of Sciences. Issue III: Biodiversity and Transformation of mountain ecosystems of Caucasus (ed. Lebedeva, N. V.) , SSC RAS Publishing, Rostov-on-Don : 130-150 [full-text PDF] [English Abstract]

Ponomarev, A. V. & Chumachenko, Y. A. (2007): Arachnida in Ground Mesofauna of Yew-box Grove of the Caucasian Biospheric Reserve [in Russian]. Studies of the Southern Scientific Center fo the Russian Academy of Sciences. Issue III: Biodiversity and Transformation of mountain ecosystems of Caucasus (ed. Lebedeva, N. V.) , SSC RAS Publishing, Rostov at Don : 151-163 [full-text PDF] [English Abstract]

New pdf available

Stefan Otto — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:34:02 +0000

I just received permission from RIA to put my article on Olios sericeus (Kroneberg 1875) in Georgia into the download area. You can also get it directly from here:

Jäger, P. & Otto, S. (2007): New records of Olios sericeus (Kroneberg 1875) with notes on its taxonomy and biogeography (Araneae: Sparassidae: Sparassinae). Revista Ibérica de Aracnologia 14: 19-24