Spiders

This list was first compiled by Rick Vetter (UC Riverside Entomology Dept.) around 2003 based on his collections and knowledge of the area.  Most specimens are housed at the UCR Entomology Research Museum.  Other taxa have been observed or collected over the years and added to the list.  As with other arthropods, it is often difficult, even for an expert in the group, to identify a specimen to species level. Taxa that are only identifiable to Family or Genus level, for example if the specimen was only observed in the field or if it was immature, are still valuable to the overall goal of documenting the invertebrate diversity found here.  It is often through this process of documenting the unknown that new species are discovered, as witnessed by the newly described spider, Cavernocymbium vetteri (Ubick 2005), collected from the Granite Mountains.

Araneae (Spiders)

The checklist below is available for download here. All taxa have been vouchered, unless otherwise noted. Taxa that have only been observed (marked with *) are only added to the list if there is a certain level of confidence on the ID and it represents a taxon that had not previously been recorded here. A taxon labeled with “indet. sp.” indicates it was indeterminable beyond a certain rank, whereas “nova sp.” indicates that it is recognized as a new taxon but has yet to be published. Each scientific name is linked to a profile page on the Iowa State University BugGuide. In addition, the double arrow (⇒) next to each taxonomic entry will link you to the World Spider Catalog. We also have some of these species in our photo gallery.