Researchers from three U.S. museums and two U.S. universities, plus a worldwide group of over 20 colleagues, will collaborate to conduct a global survey and inventory of the dwarf hunting spiders. These animals are very poorly known; preliminary data indicate that the 459 currently described species represent only about 20% of the actual diversity of the group. The team will assemble and sort the specimens available in collections and acquire new material through 12 expeditions that will concentrate on securing better samples of forest floor and canopy-dwelling species. Team members will build Internet-accessible databases of the species, all specimen locality data, and images; a new application will allow team members to enter descriptive data into a multi-user database, in a highly structured format that will allow direct use of that information in formal descriptions for publication, on species web pages, in phylogenetic analyses, and in interactive keys. Automated identification systems, using artificial neural networks, will be developed, and the accuracy of those systems will be compared with that achieved by workers, ranging from total beginners to knowledgeable specialists, using interactive keys to the same species.
Other impacts of the project include training several high school, undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students (with emphasis on recruiting members of groups currently underrepresented in the science workforce). Project outreach plans include a major traveling museum exhibition designed to focus public attention on the importance and excitement of biodiversity discovery and preservation. Extensive public-aimed web materials will be developed that will be useful for pre-college level teaching.
This project has addressed the diversity, genealogical relationships, classification and evolutionary history of goblin spiders (Oonopidae), with emphasis on the fauna of Madagascar. The species of the genus Opopaea in Madagascar were documented for the first time. Opopaea is one of the most diverse and widespread genera among goblin spiders. There are 27 species of Opopaea in Madagascar, of which 26 species were new to science and were described; of these 25 species are endemic to Madagascar. All species were described and illustrated in a 156 page monograph which is available in print and on PDF format on line, free. A species identification key to the Opopaea of Madagascar and maps of their distribution was also produced and is publicly available online as part of that monograph. We also produced the first character based phylogenetic hypothesis for Opopaea and proposed a hypothesis of the higher level genealogical relationships of Oonopidae. This project has provided a model on how to carry out a global monograph of a hyperdiverse taxon using cybertaxonomic tools and a broad international team of collaborators. Our web-based specimen/image database has proved to be an effective and cohesive platform to gather, assemble and disseminate taxonomic data and to produce parallel species descriptions. We have trained a female doctoral student from Madagascar in systematics, evolution and biodiversity sciences. She is now back to Madagascar where she is seeking an academic position in the University of Antananarivo, the main center for higher education in Madagascar. With a university appointment, this researcher will be in a position to make an enormous contribution in the development and education of future generations of Malagasy biologists. The results of our work on the species diversity and geographic distribution of Opopaea in Madagascar will provide valuable data for conservation and management of natural communities. Many of these species are narrowly distributed (almost all are Malagasy endemics) and live in areas that are threatened by human-induced disturbances, most notably deforestation. Conservation biologists can use our taxonomic and geographic data to establish priorities for preserving natural habitats in Madagascar, a world biodiversity hotspot.
