20th International Congress of Arachnology

number of killed prey of both prey types. We found that

the philodromids in control treatment significantly pre-

ferred theridiids to psylla while the philodromids in both

pesticide treatments did not show any distinct prey prefer-

ences. Although SpinTor has been shown to decrease the

predatory activity of philodromids in previous studies,

both pesticide treatments increased the predatory activ-

ity of philodromids in comparison to the control in this

study. The results show that the application of pesticides

can disrupt the natural ecological dynamics of predator-

prey interactions, not only due to the changed predatory

activity but also due to the altered prey choice.

Keywords: pesticides, prey choice, predatory activity,

biocontrol

Oral presentation

An ontology for spider behavior

Peter E. Midford

6003C Willow Oaks Drive, Richmond VA 23225, USA

peter.midford@gmail.com

For over two centuries, taxonomy has provided a vocabu-

lary, controlled by an evolving code, for naming species

and other groups. Ontologies are a more recent develop-

ment in controlled vocabulary, which have been developed

for a wide range of areas of knowledge, including many of

interest to biologists. The Gene Ontology is probably the

best known example of a biological ontology, but others

exist for anatomy, biological chemistry, and ecology. Ontol-

ogies cover fields at a range of granularities. Some, like the

Gene Ontology, cover processes and cell components rel-

evant across all life, whereas others, such as the SPD spider

ontology, focus on the anatomy of a particular group. All

ontologies include a hierarchy of terms. Ontologies also

include relations between terms. The most common rela-

tion is “is a.” Another common relation is between a whole

and its parts. The relations, such as “is a” and “is part of”

allow computers to use ontologies to do simple reasoning

and to check logical definitions for formal errors. Ontolo-

gies should include human-friendly textual definitions of

terms, so ontology designers and users can properly define

and understand the relationships. This talk will describe

an in-progress ontology of spider behavior, based on terms

collected from two well-known sources (Foelix 2010,

Herberstein 2012). It intended to provide fine-grained

coverage of spider behavior, while extending and relating

terms back to the general behavior terms contained in

other vetted ontologies (GO, NBO, ABO). This talk also is

a call for community participation; ontologies are only

useful when they represent a shared understanding of

the field. Participation can include reviewing, suggesting

missing terms, and developing definitions. Review and

contribute at

http://arachb.org/ontology .

Keywords: behavior, ontologies, informatics, synthesis

Oral presentation

Resolving the taxonomic impediment

Jeremy A. Miller

1,2

, Donat Agosti

, Guido Sautter

2,3

Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Postbus 9517, 2300 RA

Leiden, The Netherlands;

Plazi.org

, Zinggstrasse 16,

3007 Bern, Switzerland;

Karlsruhe Institute of Tech-

nology, AM Fasanengarten 5, Karlsruhe, Germany

jeremy.miller@naturalis.nl

The genius of Linnaean nomenclature is to assign a

unique identifier, a formal taxonomic name, to every

known species on earth. This identifier then becomes the

basis for accumulating knowledge about that species and

distinguishing it from every other species. This includes

physical characteristics, occurrence records, and interac-

tions with other species. But the magnitude of biodiversity

presents a two-part challenge for applying this knowledge:

1) organizing information about what is already known,

and 2) incorporating species that lack formal names

and thus a mechanism for aggregating knowledge. Our

collective biodiversity knowledge is vast but unevenly

accessible, incompletely digitized, and largely unstruc-

tured. Semantic enhancement of primary taxonomic

literature using XML markup makes it possible to query

taxonomic literature like a database. We contrast data

issues and solutions for charismatic groups (e.g., Aves, a

flagship taxon for conservation despite comprising a scant

10,000 species worldwide) with megadiverse groups (e.g.,

Araneae, Hymenoptera). A series of dashboard charts have

been developed to convey at a glance critical information

contained in one or many taxonomic treatments. Because

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REPORTS

No. 3, July 2, 2016

Cushing