Corresponding author: Jeremy A. Miller (
Academic editor: Lyubomir Penev.
Students participating in a two-week tropical ecology field course offered by the Naturalis Biodiversity Center and hosted by the Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC) in Sabah, Malaysia, encountered a species of
DGFC is a research station on the Kinabatangan River in Sabah, Malaysia. The Kinabatangan River floods periodically, inundating the low-lying parts of the forest. Beyond the protected forest areas, the dominant land use is oil palm plantation. Within Danau Girang, four quarter hectare plots have been established as permanent botanical plots. Within these plots, all trees have been taxonomically identified (as far as possible) and labeled with a unique number. As the course arrived at DGFC, the water in the inundated forest was just in the process of receding.
Spider samples were taken from DGFC's four permanent botanical plots and from the nearby Hillco Estate oil palm plantation (
Within the DGFC permanent botanical plots, 4–6 points were randomly selected; eight points from a block of oil palm plantation also were selected randomly. At each point, 1 m2 was dusted for spider webs 0–10 cm above the ground using a corn starch puffer (
The taxonomic description was completed at the laboratory facilities of the Danau Girang Field Centre. Photographs were taken using an iPhone 4 through the ocular lens of a Leica Zoom 2000 stereomicroscope and an Omax compound microscope. Specimens were positioned for photography under the stereomicroscope using cotton wool. The vulva and male leg II were slide mounted and cleared for examination in palm oil.
All
Coloration and gross somatic morphology as in Fig.
Median apophysis (MA) with multiple lobes. Embolus (E) long, flexible, runs distally from median apophysis, then turns to run in proximal direction (Fig.
Scape small and rounded. Round spermathecae separated by more than three times their diameter (Fig.
Male: Total length 0.7; carapace length 0.3, width 0.3, height 0.2. Female: Total length 0.9; carapace length 0.3, width 0.3, height 0.2.
Distinctive abdominal coloration separates this from all other
Named for the Danau Girang Field Centre, the type locality for this species.
The taxonomic authority for this species is attributed to all authors of this publication. In accordance with ICZN Recommendation 51C (
Known only from the forest of the Danau Girang Field Centre.
This species builds a horizontal orb web approximately 4 cm in diameter, close to the ground (Fig.
A total of 79 adult ground-web-building spiders were collected during the plot survey. Overall ground web spider density was significantly higher in the riparian forest (5.2 per m2) compared to the other habitats investigated (1.3 and 1.75 per m2 in riverine forest and oil palm plantation, respectively; ANOVA with Tukey's pairwise comparisons,
Periodic inundation is a regular feature of the forest at Danau Gurang. Some of the low lying forests, including botanical plots 2 and 3, were flooded one to two weeks prior to this study. In addition to
As a coda to the field course, we organized a
According to the investigation of
Sergei Zonstein and an anonymous reviewer provided constructive comments on the manuscript. Thanks to Kalsum Yusah for facilitating the deposition of type specimens at the Universiti Malaysia Sabah's Institute for Tropical Biology and Conservation, Borneensis (BORN), and to Rudy Jocqué and Rowley Snazell for rapidly responding to requests for literature. We thank the Naturalis Biodiversity Center for their support of the Tropical Field Ecology course. Tom Fayle was funded by a Czech Science Foundation Standard Grant (14-32302S), Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (DP140101541), and Yayasan Sime Darby. Thanks to Cynthia Parr and Katja Schulz (Encyclopedia of Life), Tim Robertson and Tim Hirsch (GBIF), and Lyubomir Penev and the Pensoft team for their extraordinary help with this manuscript and data dissemination. Special thanks to all the staff and families at the Danau Girang Field Centre.
Density of
Environmental data and results from the plot survey. Tree species richness and total number of trees (tree count) in four 0.25 ha plots are reported. Number of oil palms per 0.25 ha was estimated using Google Earth (images dated 2009), and tree species richness was assumed to be approximately 1. Sample sizes in parentheses refer to the number of 1 m2 samples within each botanical plot. Spider data are adults per square meter ± standard error. See also Suppl. material
Riparian forest | Riverine forest | Oil palm plantation | |||
Botanical plot 1 ( |
Botanical plot 4 ( |
Botanical plot 2 ( |
Botanical plot 3 ( |
( |
|
Tree species | 51 | 45 | 31 | 32 | 1 |
Tree count | 179 | 164 | 219 | 178 | 25 |
Spiders | 6.5 ± 1.7 | 3.25 ± 1.7 | 1.5 ± 0.5 | 1.0 ± 0.4 | 2.3 ± 1.0 |
5.2 ± 1.1 | 1.8 ± 1.8 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Spider morphospecies sampled from riparian forest, riverine forest, and oil palm plantation
Data type: Structured sampling data
Brief description: Adult ground-web-building spider morphospecies sampled from 1 m2 plots in the Danau Girang botanical plots and nearby Hilco Estate oil palm plantation. The number of 1 m2 plots in each site is given as
File: oo_6233.xls