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This volume merges all geographical and paleogeographical data on all groups of the arachnofauna. The book features topics such as the ecological factors, climate and other barriers that influence the distribution of arachnida. It also elaborates on the characteristics of the distribution such as arachnida at high altitude (e.g. Himalaya), in caves, in polar regions and highlights differences between the arachnofauna of e.g. Mediterranean regions vs Central Europe, West African vs Indomalayan and more. Furthermore, amongst other topics the volume also includes chapters on the systems of arachnida, fossil orders, dispersal and dispersion, endemics and relicts, regional arachnogeography, cave and high altitude arachnida.
Fossil arachnids date back more than 400 million years to the Silurian period, making them one of the first animal groups to appear in terrestrial ecosystems. This book provides information on what the arachnids are and their relationships to one another.
This authoritative catalogue will greatly assist readers in finding the correct taxonomic name for any given family, genus or species within each of the six arachnid orders treated. It contains a valuable summary of bibliographic information, enabling readers to access the worldwide literature for these smaller orders. The catalogue presents full bibliographic data on each of the taxa named thus far, treating over 1600 species. It contains the most current classification system for each group, some of which have not been catalogued on a world scale for over 70 years. A summary of taxonomic changes is included. This quality reference will be of immense value to arachnologists, systematists, taxonomists, ecologists and biodiversity professionals, especially those interested in tropical rainforest communities.
Compared to insects, fossil spiders have received only scant attention in the literature. Previously, the only works available were numerous scientific papers, many published in foreign languages. Most of these are basic descriptive taxonomic works, with very few considering broader biological concepts. Despite a significant increase in the discovery and description of fossil spiders within the last quarter Century this void remained unfilled. Thus, this short monograph aims to achieve several objectives. Firstly, to provide general and up to date background information on the overall importance and diversity of fossils spiders, including an indication of those groups for which the taxonomy is spurious and in need of reassessment. Secondly, to discuss the techniques available for working with fossil spiders and some of the problems encountered by palaeoarachnologists, including bias and limitations of the spider fossil record. Thirdly, the overall evolutionary history of spiders is summarized in the form of an evolutionary tree, which is subsequently used to address key issues of broad interest, such as origins, diversifications and extinctions, including the effects of mass extinctions and predator-prey co-radiations. Finally, the contribution that fossil data can make to understanding the past and present biogeography of the order is considered. This book should be of interest to both amateur and professional arachnologists and palaeontologists and will also serve as a general palaeontological reference work for neonologists studying extant spiders.
My initial interest in the Solifugae (camel-spiders) stems from an incident that occurred in the summer of 1986. I was studying the behavioral ecology of spider wasps of the genus Pepsis and their interactions with their large theraphosid (tarantula) spider hosts, in the Chihuahuan Desert near Big Bend National Park, Texas. I was monitoring a particular tarantula burrow one night when I noticed the resident female crawl up into the burrow entrance. Hoping to take some photographs of prey capture, I placed a cricket near the entrance and waited for the spider to pounce. Suddenly, out of the comer of my eye appeared a large, rapidly moving yellowish form which siezed the cricket and quickly ran off with it until it disappeared beneath a nearby mesquite bush. So suddenly and quickly had the sequence of events occurred, that I found myself momentarily startled. With the aid of a headlamp I soon located the intruder, a solifuge, who was already busy at work macerating the insect with its large chelicerae (jaws). When I attempted to nudge it with the edge of my forceps, it quickly moved to another location beneath the bush. When I repeated this maneuver, the solifuge dropped the cricket and lunged at the forceps, gripping them tightly in its jaws, refusing to release them until they were forcefully pulled away.
Mazon Creek Fossils documents the proceedings of a Symposium on Mazon Creek Fossils held at the campus of the University of Michigan during the annual meeting of the North-Central section of the Geological Society of America, 1 May 1978. The present volume contains most of the papers presented at that meeting, and two contributions prepared for it but not delivered in Ann Arbor. The volume is divided into four parts. Part contains papers on sedimentation, fossil distribution, and the origin of the concretions. Part II on paleobotany includes studies on soft-sediment cementation enclosing Mazon plant fossils and diversity and stratigraphic Age of the Mazon Creek flora. The papers in Part III focus on invertebrate paleontology. It includes studies on soft-bodied coelenterates in the Pennsylvanian of Illinois and the centipedes (Chilopoda) of the Mazon Creek. Part IV on vertebrate paleontology includes papers on fishes of the Mazon Creek Fauna and Amphibamus grandiceps as a possible frog ancestor.
The 25 authors provide a much-needed synthesis of what is currently known about these relatives of spiders, focusing on basic conceptual issues in systematics and evolutionary ecology, making comparisons with other well-studied arachnid groups, such as spiders and scorpions. --from publisher description.