Bibliographic checklist of Korean spiders (Arachnida: Araneae) ver. 2015

Abstract

Biodiversity encompasses variety of all life, including genes, species, communities, and ecosystems (Gaston, 1996). Understanding the biodiversity and distribution of species is an important part of many preservation and conservation programs. Fauna lists are inventories that generally have two main objectives: to aid the establish ment of biodiversity on various scales and to serve as raw material or distributional information for research fields, such as taxonomy, ecology, and physiology. Fau na lists that have a key function in many fields can be composed for various ecosystems at national or regional scales.Spiders are a ubiquitous and important predator group with high richness and abundance among invertebrates; they occur in many natural, as well as in agricultural ecosystems (Howell and Pienkowski, 1971;Nyffeler and Benz, 1987). Spiders are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in the total species diversity among all other groups of organisms (Sebastin and Peter, 2009), with 44,906 recorded species of 3,935 genera belonging to 114 families, as of June 2014 (Platnick, 2014). Spi ders, which have a distinct ecological niche, play sever al important roles in ecosystems: 1) as a component of biodiversity, 2) by contributing to material circulation and energy transfer through preying on many animals in higher trophic levels in the food web, 3) as a natural enemy that feed on many agricultural and forest insect pests, 4) as indicator species detecting environmental changes, such as global warming and environmental pol lution, and 5) providing physiologically active substan ces, such as poison and spider thread, which has used in many research fields.To date, the list of Korean spiders has been revised 24 times from 1956 to 2015 (Paik and Kim, 1956;

Taxonomic study on Sinopoda Jäger, 1999 (Araneae, Sparassidae, Heteropodinae), with three new species from Korea

“… Sinopoda jirisanensis Kim & Chae, 2013 was synonymized to Sinopoda forcipata (Karsch, 1881) ( Yoo et al 2015 : 6), however S. jirisanensis can be easily distinguished from S. forcipata ( Jäger 1999 : 20, figs 1–4, 6–7; Jäger and Ono 2000 : 52, figs 27–34) by the following characteristics: 1) embolus consistently slender, without membranous flange (distally broadened with membranous flange in S. forcipata ), 2) distal portion of embolic apophysis distinctly longer than anterior width of subtegulum, with folded extension (slightly shorter than anterior width of subtegulum, without folded extension in S. forcipata ), 3) dRTA distinctly shorter than tibia (as long as tibia in S. forcipata ), 4) lobal septum ~ 1/5 of epigynal field width (~ 1/9 in S. forcipata ), and 5) posteromedial portion of lateral lobes without humps (with pair of round humps pointing posteromedially in S. forcipata ). Judging from diagnostic characteristics mentioned above, this species should be removed from a junior synonym of S. forcipata and revalidated as a good species.…”

“…Later, Kim (2009) reviewed the Korean members, describing Sinopoda forcipata (Karsch, 1881) as a previously unrecorded species. The endemic species diversity of Korean Sinopoda had been noted by some small studies describing five additional new species before 2015 ( Kim et al 2013 , 2014 , 2015 ; Kim and Chae 2013 ; Kim and Ye 2015 ), but four of them, viz, Sinopoda clivus Kim, Chae & Kim, 2013, Sinopoda jirisanensis Kim & Chae, 2013, Sinopoda aureola Kim, Lee & Lee, 2014, and Sinopoda yeoseodoensis Kim & Ye, 2015 were synonymized with previously known species in a checklist of Korean spiders ( Yoo et al 2015 ). However, Lee et al (2016) noted that the synonymization was not clearly justified since taxonomic notes on their treatment was not provided, and primarily revalidated S. aureola and provided descriptions of two new species.…”

Taxonomic Notes on the Genus Sinopoda (Araneae, Sparassidae), with Descriptions of Two New Species from Korea

“…6) ········································ Sinopoda forcipata -Lateral lobe without hump (Fig. 5E) Yoo et al (2015) failed to provide plausible explanations to justify their treatment for synonymization of those species. Moreover, according to original descriptions for each species Kim et al, , 2014Kim and Ye, 2015), those synonymized species clearly possessed distinct shapes of body patterns and copulatory organs in both sexes that can be readily distinguished from their respective senior species.…”

“…Up to date, the genus con tains 56 valid species, about 95% of them are endemic to each country (World Spider Catalog, 2016). Previously eight species had been recorded from Korea (Kim et al, 2015a(Kim et al, , 2015b before the latest checklist of Korean spiders by Yoo et al (2015) in which they reported three species for Korean Sinopoda species. Recently Yoo et al (2015) revised Korean spider fauna, and synonymized four species, viz, Sinopoda aureola Kim, Lee and Lee, Sinopoda clivus Kim, Chae and Kim, Sinopoda yeoseodoensis Kim and Ye and Sinopoda jirisanensis Kim and Chae with Sinopoda stellatops Jäger and Ono, Sinopoda koreana Paik and Sinopoda forcipata Karsch, respectively, without taxonomic notes on their treat ment.…”

“…Recently Yoo et al (2015) revised Korean spider fauna, and synonymized four species, viz, Sinopoda aureola Kim, Lee and Lee, Sinopoda clivus Kim, Chae and Kim, Sinopoda yeoseodoensis Kim and Ye and Sinopoda jirisanensis Kim and Chae with Sinopoda stellatops Jäger and Ono, Sinopoda koreana Paik and Sinopoda forcipata Karsch, respectively, without taxonomic notes on their treat ment. Synonymization for those Korean species by Yoo et al (2015) was not properly justified because diagnostic char acteristics of synonymized species are so distinct that it can be used to distinguish them from other Sinopoda species.…”