SPIDER INVENTORY : UPDATED RESULTS

The field missions over, Dr. Patrick Maréchal has updated the inventory report of Saint-Barthélemy’s spider (french) which remains a work-in-progress. It will indeed need a more significant identification work before closing this inventory. An inventory which, on July 2014, date of the last field mission, had identified about 70 species of spiders from 28 families, which is significant for an island of 21 km2.

Although not exhaustive, this inventory represents a dramatic progess in the knowledge of this particular fauna in Saint-Barthélémy by significantly increasing the census of what was already known, but without finding all the taxa that are cited in the different sources available.

At this time, it can be estimated that at least 90% or even 95% of the island’s aranological fauna has been sampled. It would be tempting to continue in order to complete the inventory as much as possible, but the investment required will be all the greater as the number of species remaining to be discovered decreases. Thus, a fourth mission probably would not allow to find more than 2 or 3 new species for the island, probably spiders rare or confined to very particular environments.