Thirteen previously unrecorded spiders detected by citizen scientists from Puerto Rico and the U. S. Virgin Islands: A contribution to the spider fauna 100 years after Petrunkevitch's work

Abstract

The rapid detection of exotic species is instrumental for their successful control and eradication. This is especially important in areas with limited resources available to mitigate any potentially detrimental impacts. Since Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands lack local arachnologists specialized in spiders, I explored citizen scientists’ photographic records to determine their usefulness in detecting spiders not recorded in scientific literature for the region. From citizens photographs I identified 13 spiders that have not been previously recorded in the region. I determine six spiders preliminarily to species, i. e., Cithaeron praedonius O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1872, Falconina gracilis (Keyserling, 1891), Habronattus paratus (G. W. Peckham & E. G. Peckham, 1896), Kapogea isosceles (Mello-Leitão, 1939), Micrathena similis Bryant, 1945, and Phidippus regius C. L. Koch, 1846, and six to genera, all previously not recorded from the region, i. e., Mazax, Mastophora, Metacyrba, Microdipoena, Uloborus, and Ummidia. These findings represent the addition of the families Halonoproctidae, Cithaeronidae, and Symphytognathidae to the region. Citizen scientists often lack the knowledge to identify their photographed spiders; however, from their photographs I found a few more unrecorded spiders (13 vs. 8) than what arachnologists had published in the last 20 years. This shows that observations by citizen scientists may be an underutilized source of data that can increase and accelerate the rate of detection of previously unknown spiders to a region.

Citation

Mercado, Javier E. 2025. Thirteen previously unrecorded spiders detected by citizen scientists from Puerto Rico and the U. S. Virgin Islands: A contribution to the spider fauna 100 years after Petrunkevitch's work. Caribbean Journal of Science. 55(2): 317-335.