The study of hidden habitats sheds light on poorly known taxa: spiders of the Mesovoid Shallow Substratum

Abstract

The scarce and biased knowledge about the diversity and distribution of Araneae species in the Iberian Peninsula is accentuated in poorly known habitats such as the Mesovoid Shallow Substratum (MSS). The aim of this study was to characterize the spiders inventory of the colluvial MSS of the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park, and to assess the importance of this habitat for the conservation of the taxon. Thirty-three localities were selected across the high peaks of the Guadarrama mountain range and they were sampled for a year using subterranean traps specially designed to capture arthropods in the MSS. Species accumulation curves were built both for the observed species richness and for the non-parametric richness estimators. The literature was reviewed in order to update the distributional maps of the rarest species. Forty-two species were collected, of which four were species new to science. More than half were represented by one or two individuals which caused the accumulation curves to rise slowly and to end without reaching an asymptote. Almost half of the species showed significant increases in their Iberian distribution ranges. Two species were recorded for the first time in the Iberian Peninsula and 32 species were new additions to the spider checklist of the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park.

A trait database and updated checklist for European subterranean spiders

“…included species that we had overlooked in the previous version of the checklist-see, e.g., missing species pointed out in ref. 33 ; and III). updated taxonomy following recent nomenclatural changes 34 and corrected a few mistakes we detected.…”

New record of Attulus saltator for Spain, with further 16 new regional spider records for Catalonia and Galicia (Araneae)

“…This population in Galicia increases the number of Spanish regions where S. iberica has been found to five, after being recorded in Andalusia, the Valencian Community, Cantabria (all: Bosmans et al 2010) and possibly Castile and León (identified as Sintula cf. iberica in Ledesma et al 2019).…”

Niche‐based processes explaining the distributions of closely related subterranean spiders

“…In fact, being active hunters rather than web-builders, Dysderidae are frequently associated with MSS habitats , and different species have been collected in MSS in other areas [e.g. Dysdera (Arnedo et al, 2007;Pipan et al, 2010), Harpactocrates and Harpactea (Ledesma et al, 2019)].…”