Calling Spider Experts

[robertwhyte]

Hi, I am new to iNaturalist. But loving it. I participated over the weekend in a high quality biodiversity survey with its project Cooloola BioBlitz

I am author of Whyte & Anderson A Field Guide to Spiders of Australia

I can get to “theoretical” research grade fairly easily with most Australian spiders but it would be great to have collaborators who could check my suggestions and if they find them valuable and correct, add the necessary ID suggestion to elevate their research grade. You can get the papers from the World Spider Catalogue. The search is here http://www.wsc.nmbe.ch/search Membership is free and gives you access to download the literature in which the new or revised names appear. Because of Swiss laws you can download papers normally inaccessible due to copyright law restrictions. If there is an available PDF, it is downloadable by the PDF symbol. (You need to be logged in for this to work.) It’s a Darwin-send!

I hope people might like to participate in this project. Last year we got 37 new species which made news world wide. There may be as many this year. This is a new species, as in page 345 in my book. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/25432559 First specimen collected this year! The second was an undescribed female of a known species, Helpis foelixi

Have fun and don’t hold back!

[crellow]

Hi Robert, and welcome to iNat. I’m glad you’re loving it! I do hope you’ll stick around—it would be wonderful to have your expertise in the Australian iNat community. I’ve been awaiting your book with great interest since I stumbled upon arachne.org.au several years ago. My working knowledge of Australian spiders is fairly minimal, so I doubt I’ll be able to help with your project!

[kiwifergus]

Hiya Robert!

We had fun re-visiting our NZ Hypoblemum albovittatum (and putting them to H. griseum), many thanks to you all for clarifying them in literature :)

I have been learning NZ spiders, and have a long way to go. We have been fortunate in NZ with the remarkable work of the Forsters, among others. There are some overlaps between NZ and AU, and the occasional visitors, most notably the Nephila that turn up around Auckland/Northland.

There are a number of us that tag each other with interesting obs and questions etc, and I hope in time I get to branch out into the Australian fauna more. In the mean time, any help I can be in iNat do feel free to tag or direct message me!