LinyGen
Linyphioid Genera of the World (Pimoidae and Linyphiidae),
An Illustrated
Catalog By: Gustavo Hormiga, Dimitar Dimitrov, Jeremy A. Miller and
Fernando Alvarez-Padilla, [version 2.0]
Department of Biological Sciences, The George Washington
University,
Washington D.C., 20052, U.S.A.
LinyGen is a
catalog of images of pimoid and linyphiid spiders (informally called
"linyphioids"). The primary goal of LinyGen is to aid
in taxonomic identification in this large lineage of araneoid spiders
by providing images of at least the type species for the 571 currently
valid linyphioid genera. This image database grew out of our need to
access illustrations of all linyphioid genera, both for identification
and for phylogenetic research purposes. The taxonomic literature for
this group goes back to Clerk's Arenei
Svecici
(1757) and is scattered across an enormous diversity of bibliographic
sources (many of them difficult to access to most workers). Platnick's
catalog provides the indispensable reference for the
taxonomic works on spiders, including Pimoidae and Linyphiidae, and we
have used it as the taxonomic skeleton of LinyGen. For each
genus we have tried to include illustrations of the type species taken
form the original description or redescription available in the
taxonomic literature. In most cases we have included images of other
species as well, to illustrate the morphological diversity within the
genus. Because of the high diversity of sources, the quality of these
images is highly variable. In a few cases in which no illustrations
exist (e.g., Priperia
bicolor Simon) we have provided the text of the original
description.
LinyGen
is a reference tool that can help with taxonomic identification, but it
is not an identification key. Few identification keys for linyphiids
exist (and most of them are regional in scope), none exists for the
world genera. Consequently, users of LinyGen that are
unfamiliar with linyphioid diversity may find identification in this
group to be a Herculean task. This frustrating state of affairs in
linyphioid taxonomy was one of the reasons that took us to compile
LinyGen. Although LinyGen
can help by providing quick and easy access
to thousands of published illustrations from more than 277 references,
the user will need a certain level of taxonomic knowledge to navigate
this maze. This situation is far from ideal, but we think it is
significantly better than browsing through hundreds of pages in a
myriad of printed references.
To use LinyGen
access the website
(http://www.gwu.edu/~linygen/)
using an internet browser, such as
Mozilla FireFox ( or Microsoft Internet Explorer ). This will bring you
to the Home page. The format is very simple; there is one web page per
genus. On the left of the computer screen there are two narrow boxes,
one for each family, which alphabetically lists all the genera in
Linyphiidae and Pimoidae. To access the images for a given genus,
select the genus name in the corresponding family box and click
“submit.” This will retrieve the genus page with the genus name, its
type species, generic synonyms (if any exist), images of the type
species (unless those were unavailable) and/or other species, the list
of species currently classified in the genus and the geographic
distribution of the genus. The taxonomic information has been directly
retrieved from Platnick’s catalog, including the geographic
distribution.
Funding for this version of the catalog has been provided by a PEET
grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation to Gustavo Hormiga and
Gonzalo Giribet (DEB 0328644) and by Research Enhancement Fund and a
Selective Excellence award from The George Washington University. This
project was initially funded by NSF grant DEB 9712353. Thanks to
Vanessa Degrassi (GWU), Peyman Bakshpour (GWU) and Sohum Mehta (GWU)
for help scanning and editing the images. Special thanks to Norman
Platnick for his electronic spider catalog, which greatly facilitated
this work. Don Buckle and Rudy Jocque provided comments on earlier
version of LinyGen.
We are also very grateful to the numerous
colleagues around the world that have made suggestions or corrected
errors in earlier versions of LinyGen.
We also would like to thank the
George Washington University and the Smithsonian Institution libraries
for their help in obtaining many of the needed references.
We would
like to thank all linyphiidologists and the publishers of their work
for their permission to reproduce their illustrations (copyright
permission for some images still pending). Special thanks to Michael
Roberts, whose The
Spiders of Great Britain and Ireland has been the
source of most of the illustrations of European linyphiid genera.
This
catalog should be cited as:
Hormiga, G., D. Dimitrov, J.A. Miller, and
F. Alvarez-Padilla. 2008. LinyGen:
Linyphioid Genera of the World
(Pimoidae and Linyphiidae), An Illustrated Catalog.
Version 2.0. The
George Washington University, online at
http://www.gwu.edu/~linygen/index.cfm.
Please, send any comments or
corrections to Gustavo Hormiga (hormiga@gwu.edu),
Department of
Biological Sciences, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
20052, USA.