Order  Araneae Spiders

General Information on Spiders

Spiders are the dominant ground-dwelling non-vertebrate predators in many ecosystems and they play a substantial role as biological regulators. They are worldwide in distribution, and include 109 families, 3471 genera and more than 37500 described species (Platnick, 2002). Spiders are widely distributed in North America, and are found in all climatic zones.

Despite their substantial ecological role, North American spiders, and specially those of New York are not completely known. They have been so poorly studied in New York State that we are unable to properly evaluate the biodiversity of spiders in the State, or compare the fauna with that of others northern US states or Canada. For example, the last list of New York State spiders was completed by Crosby and Bishop in 1928. They included 174 genera and 576 species. However, Kaston in his book "Spiders of Connecticut" recorded 184 genera and 462 species of spiders from Connecticut. If the adjunct territories of Connecticut State (including territory of New York east to Hudson river are included the total rose to 224 genera and 597 species.

Preliminary research was undertaken by us in BRF during 1997 and 1998. From May 1999 to July 2001 we collected spiders in BRF using a variety of collecting techniques, and almost all were identified. A total of 290 species of spiders were collected, belonging to 133 genera and 27 families. All this data is new, because the spider fauna of BRF has not been studied previously.

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