Corresponding author: Klemen Čandek (
Academic editor:
Given the limited success of past and current conservation efforts, an alternative approach is to preserve tissues and genomes of targeted organisms in cryobanks to make them accessible for future generations. Our pilot preservation project aimed to obtain, expertly identify, and permanently preserve a quarter of the known spider species diversity shared between Slovenia and Switzerland, estimated at 275 species. We here report on the faunistic part of this project, which resulted in 324 species (227 in Slovenia, 143 in Switzerland) for which identification was reasonably established. This material is now preserved in cryobanks, is being processed for DNA barcoding, and is available for genomic studies.
Today, the importance of understanding and conserving biodiversity is undisputed. However, climate changes, urbanization, deforestation and pollution all critically affect most of the planet\'s ecosystems, which consequently are changing too rapidly for organisms to adapt to (
In 2010-2012, we collected spiders at 74 and 33 localities in Slovenia and Switzerland, respectively (Fig.
Altogether, we identified 1596 adult individuals, belonging to 324 species, 183 genera and 33 spider families. From the 76 localities in Slovenia, we recorded 227 species belonging to 144 genera and 31 families. From the 33 localities in Switzerland, we recorded 143 species belonging to 89 genera and 18 families. The number of unique species was 181 and 97 for Slovenia and Switzerland, respectively. As an indication of rare species in our survey, singletons (those species represented on the list with a single individual (
Faunistic research has recently been neglected in most scientific outlets. Yet, faunistic studies contain crucial base line data urgently needed for ecological work, and particularly for meaningful conservation decisions. We see no reason for taxonomic experts of particular clade, such as spiders, not to offer such hard produced data to the public, particularly if these researchers consulted an array of literature sources to back up the species identifications. Our survey spanning two central European countries, Slovenia and Switzerland, is larger in scope and in faunistic data compared with most temperate studies reported in the literature. A quick overview of the literature suggests that only one study of temperate spider fauna reports more than 300 species (
The main goals of our study was not to merely report on the species lists, nor to compare the lists between the two countries as the sampling was not structured qualitatively nor quantitatively. Rather, this report is the first step towards our larger efforts to process this freshly collected and expertly identified biological material further. Thus, our upcoming works will report on the inclusion of selected vouchers from this survey in permanent preservation facilities, both as tissue and as genome grade DNA. Furthermore, we intend to provide DNA barcode data for selected representatives of these reported faunas. Because the taxa reported here are expertly identified, upcoming DNA barcodes, once freely available on BOLD and GenBank databases, will facilitate species identification (
This project was made possible by a Swiss Contribution to the enlarged EU (CONS SPIDERS project, grant number C1536-11T440013) awarded to M. Kuntner and C. Kropf, and by matching funds from the Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS-NRU/J1-2063-0618-2012/1). We thank G. Aljančič, R. C. Cheng, S. Kralj-Fišer, T. Lokovšek, U. Pristovšek and R. Šiling for their help in the field and laboratory and especially the community of Alp Flix and Jürg Paul Müller for their amazing hospitality.
A map of central Europe with sampling localities indicated. Legend: SI = Slovenia; CH = Switzerland