Arachnological biosecurity on one of the world’s most remote inhabited islands: a checklist of stowaway spiders found on Saint Helena, South Atlantic Ocean

Sherwood, Danniella and Stevens, Natasha and Peters, Rosalie and Fowler, Liza and Joshua, Daryl and Balchin, Julie (2025) Arachnological biosecurity on one of the world’s most remote inhabited islands: a checklist of stowaway spiders found on Saint Helena, South Atlantic Ocean. NATURA SOMOGYIENSIS (45). pp. 57-68. ISSN 1587-1908 (nyomtatott); 2062-9990 (online)

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Abstract

An annotated checklist of non-native spiders intercepted by biosecurity staff of the Agriculture & Natural Resources Division (ANRD) of the Saint Helena Government is presented, along with a complete list of all other known stowaway specimens examined by us in other collections. As a consequence, Araneus quadratus Clerck, 1757 and Neoscona rapta (Thorell, 1899) and four generic-level taxa are newly recorded for the list of Saint Helenian spiders. Five morphospecies, including one that constituted a new genus record, are newly reported (Clubiona sp., Crossopriza sp., Palystes sp., Physocyclus sp., and Zenodorus sp.). Palystes sp. also represents the first record of the family Sparassidae Bertkau, 1872 for Saint Helena. One further record of a previously known species, Steatoda nobilis (Thorell, 1875), is made from a specimen recently intercepted in an inbound parcel in 2024. Finally, a list of additional immature specimens, unidentifiable below the family level but nonetheless examined for this work, are presented to complete the catalogue of specimens in the ANRD collections. The total number of spider families recognised on the island raises to 33 and valid genera and species (i.e. excluding undetermined morphospecies) to 92 and 116, respectively.

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