20th International Congress of Arachnology

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DENVER MUSEUM OF NATURE & SCIENCE REPORTS | No. 3, July 2, 2016
way, spider communities within grassland shrubs serve as
a model system for habitat diversity, fragmentation, patch
size, and other aspects of spatial heterogeneity.
Keywords: grassland, Araneae, spatial heterogeneity
Poster presentation
Database of South East Asian jumping spiders
Peter Koomen
Uiterdijksterweg 45, NL-8931BL Leeuwarden, The
Netherlands
In 2001 I started to study the spiders (labah-labah in
Malay) of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. However, summariz-
ing literature (field guides, handbooks) was lacking, and
internet databases were still in their infancy. I started the
compilation of a database with all the pictures (drawings,
photographs) from the scattered literature referring to
species or genera of jumping spiders (Salticidae) that may
occur on Borneo (so: literature describing species from
Borneo and neighbouring areas like Sumatra, Java, West-
Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Southeast-China, Vietnam,
Philippines). The database ‘Labah-labah Sabah’ was devel-
oped in such a way (MS Access, simple structure, pictures
incorporated within the database), that it should be easy
to use. It now contains about 10,500 pictures. Although a
tremendous progress was made with internet databases, my
database still has a few advantages. For example, pictures
can be arranged in an ‘atlas’ of pictorial datasheets per
species (a Southeast Asian jumping spider book!) or in
overviews of similarly looking genital organs. Its major
drawback is, of course, that it is restricted to Salticidae and
to Southeast Asia. If it still may be a useful tool for you, I
will be glad to provide you with a (free) copy of the whole
database (1.95 GB) and/or a pdf of the atlas (150 MB).
Keywords: Salticidae, Southeast Asia database, identification
Poster presentation
Towards a spider photo guide of Xish-
uangbanna, Yunnan, China
Peter Koomen1, Shuqiang Li2
1Uiterdijksterweg 45, NL-8931BL Leeuwarden, The
Netherlands; 2Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy
of Sciences, 1 Beichen West Road, Chaoyang District,
Beijing 100101, PR, China
Reliable field guides with nice, colourful photographs of
spiders, with their correct names, are not widespread in
Southeast Asia. The oldest is a field guide to common
Singapore spiders (1989), only to be followed by guides for
Thailand (2001, citrus orchards only), Hong Kong (2007,
jumping spiders only), China (2011, entirely), Brunei
(2013), and Malaysia (2015). Most of the scientific litera-
ture describes how spiders look like in collections, after at
least several years of preservation with consequent loss of
colours. This all makes it difficult to interest the general
public or even life science students in tropical arachnol-
ogy. We need more field guides (printed, on the internet, or
both) to show what magnificent creatures live in tropical
rain forests, which are constantly under threat. In July 2015
the first steps were taken to prepare a field guide with pho-
tographs of live spiders of Xishuangbanna prefecture, in the
very south of China, close to Laos. Here, expanding rubber
plantations pose the greatest threat. Within three weeks,
more than 750 specimens were photographed from various
points of view. The spiders were collected by hand and by
fogging, during day and night, by a team of four collectors.
All spiders were anaesthetized and photographed against a
white background, in such a way that important features
will be well visible. Afterwards the spiders were preserved in
96% ethanol and transported to Beijing for proper identi-
fication and, in some cases, DNA analysis. A first Chinese
version of the ‘Xishuangbanna spider photo guide’ with
about 150 species is expected to be ready in 2017.
Keywords: identification, photography, field guide,
South China
Oral presentation
Community assembly over evolutionary
time: application of next generation
sequencing for high throughput assess-
ment of Hawaiian arthropod diversity
Henrik Krehenwinkel1, Kennedy Susan1 , Henderson Jim2,
Russack Joe2, Simison Brian2 , Gillespie Rosemary1
1Environmental Science, Policy and Management,
University of California, Berkeley, USA; 2Center for
20th International Congress of Arachnology