Biological diversity is depleting at an alarming rate. Additionally, a vast amount of
biodiversity still remains undiscovered. Taxonomy has been serving the purpose of …

Background The major islands of the Western Mediterranean--Corsica, Sardinia, and the
Balearic Islands--are continental terrenes that drifted towards their present day location …

This paper reviews little-known species of the dysderid spider genera Dysdera Latreille,
1804, and Dysderella Dunin, 1992 based on specimens collected in the Caucasus, Middle …

The field of systematics involves at least three major elements: biodiversity exploration
(inventory); taxonomic discovery and description (taxonomy); and the estimation of …

Studies conducted on volcanic islands have greatly contributed to our current understanding
of how organisms diversify. The Canary Islands archipelago, located northwest of the coast …

Aim Our aim was to determine the relative contribution of species replacement and richness
differences to overall beta diversity in Macaronesian spiders, the influence of several …

Arachnids, an ancient lineage of chelicerate arthropods, are the largest order of carnivorous
animals on the planet. Their diversity and abundance render them the prominent predators …

The B razilian C aatinga is part of the seasonally dry tropical forests, a vegetation type
disjunctly distributed throughout the N eotropics. It has been suggested that during P …

Living fossils are lineages that have retained plesiomorphic traits through long time periods.
It is expected that such lineages have both originated and diversified long ago. Such …

The tropics contain many of the most biodiverse regions on Earth but the processes
responsible for generating this diversity remain poorly understood. This study investigated …