SANSA NEWS No 26 JUNE– AUGUST 2016 12th AFRAS COLLOQUIUM—WESTERN CAPE The AFRICAN ARACHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY (AFRAS) is a scientific society devoted to the Inside this issue: study of spiders, scorpions and other arach- nids in Africa. It was initiated in 1986 in 2017 AFRAS colloquium …......1 SANSA 20 years………..……....1 Pretoria and was first called "The Research ISA Congress feedback….….2-3 Group for the Study of African Arachnida". Bonnet award …………………..3 Red Listing……………...……....4 In 1996 the name was changed to the Afri- Augrabies National Park……….5 can Arachnological Society. Membership of Richtersveld National Park ……5 AFRAS is free of charge and is mainly used Nursery-web observations…..6-7 to report on and facilitate arachnid re- New horned trapdoor spider ….8 search undertaken in Africa. This is done Spiders on bark………………….8 Araneid mimics……………...9-10 through an annual newsletter, website and Spider Club…...…………..…...11 a colloquium held every three years. National Museum ...…………..11 New project UFS……………...12 The 12th Colloquium of the African Arach- New projects at ARC …….12-13 nology Society will be hosted by members Student project ………………14 Connie retire ………………....14 of AFRAS and will be held from 22-25 Janu- Literature…………………......14 ary 2017 at Goudini Resort near Worcester Last Word…………………….15 in the Western Cape, South Africa. The resort is about an hour’s drive from Cape SANSA 20 YEARS OLD Town. The venue is situated in the Cape THE SOUTH AFRICAN NATIONAL Floral Kingdom, with an amazing array of SURVEY (SANSA) started in 1997 at tourist attractions and the opportunity to Editors and coordinators: the ARC and will be 20 years old in sample arachnids in a global biodiversity 2017. At the 12th AFRAS Colloquium hotspot. The second circular is now availa- Ansie Dippenaar-Schoeman & we will have special sessions to give Robin Lyle ble and can be downloaded from the AFRAS some feedback on SANSA, with ARC-Plant Protection Research website (http://afras.ufs.ac.za). Institute highlights, where we currently stand, Private Bag X134 CONTACT: Charles Haddad (Chairman) at and the way forward documenting the Queenswood [email protected] arachnid diversity of South Africa. 0121 South Africa Ansie Dippenaar-Schoeman will or- E-mail: [email protected] SOME GOOD NEWS ganize the session and workshops and interested persons can contact Charles Haddad At last the SANSA VIRTUAL MUSEUM Department of Zoology & Entomol- her directly to participate. ogy is working again. If you click on University of the Free State “more” the images are now enlarged. P.O. Box 339 We have a backlog of > 1000 images Bloemfontein 9300 and hope to load them as soon as pos- South Africa sible. But please, if you have images to E-mail: [email protected] add we need them! Also see the re- quest on p 4. SANSA EWS 26 Page 2 FEEDBACK ON CONGRESS—20th International Congress of Arachnology 2016 transect is across the Cederberg mountains in the Cape Floristic King- dom, South Africa and constitutes 17 sites with an elevational range of 1900 m on two aspects of the mountain (east and west) . Spider as- semblages were sampled biannually (wet and dry seasons) over six years. Four replicates per site, each consisting of a 5 × 2 pitfall grid, were sampled for five days sessions. GLMMα- and β diversity (Jaccard dissimilarity βjac and its partitioned components (βjtu and βjne)) was used to model the effects of elevation and season on these two indices respectively. Spider alpha diversity had a hump-shaped pattern on the western aspect and U-shaped on the eastern aspect. However, season interacted with elevation to produce more complex patterns during the dry season. There was no significant nestedness. Replacement accounted for 60-70 % of beta diversity between sites, and elevational distance decay in beta diversity was the result of in- creased turnover on the western aspect and increased species loss on the eastern aspect. Standardized patterns suggest that there are no effect of season on beta diversity except for a decreased rate of distance decay during the dry season on the western aspect. Large- Four Southern African Arachnologists attended the congress in scale predictors of spider alpha diversity explained a small amount of Colorado: Charles Haddad, Zingisile Mbo, Stefan Foord and variation in spider diversity, pointing to the importance of local and Tharina Bird. Below the abstracts of their posters and papers. stochastic processes. Regional turnover of spider diversity is mainly the result of niche processes, pointing to localized adaptation of taxa, this is supported by the lack of nestedness in assemblages. Termite-eating spiders (Ammoxenidae: Ammox- enus): distribution and coexistence of cryptic spe- cies [poster] Biology, behaviour and physiological adaptations of the termitophagous spider genus Ammoxenus Tharina L. Bird, Christopher Bird, John Irish & Ansie Dippenaar- [paper] Schoeman Charles Haddad, Stano Pekár, Ansie Dippenaar-Schoeman, Lenka Niche theory and the principle of competitive exclusion dictate that Petráková, Marek Brabec, Eva Líznarová, Lenka Sentenská & William species which occupy the same niche, e.g., use the same resource and Symondson occupy the same habitat in the same manner, cannot coexist. Spiders belonging to the southern African genus Ammoxenus (Araneae, Am- moxenidae) are specialists, feeding exclusively on termites. Up to four The spider genus Ammoxenus (Araneae: Ammoxenidae) is endemic Ammoxenus species were found to coexist in sympatry. These species to southern Africa. Research since the 1970’s has shown these spi- are cryptic, and can be separated only by the structure of the palp and ders to feed on termites, although their degree of dietary specializa- epigyne, sometimes only very slightly so. Collection data indicate that tion has, until recently, been unconfirmed. Ammoxenus are often very these spiders utilize the same termite food source in a seemingly iden- common in grassland and savanna habitats in South Africa where tical manner in space and time. One plausible explanation for the high harvester termites are locally abundant. Ammoxenus have various levels of sympatry in these spiders could be that the abundance of the morphological and behavioural adaptations to feeding on termites, termite food source mitigate competition, resulting in little to no niche including rastellate chelicerae, pseudosegmented tarsi, and high partitioning, in accord with ecological neutral theory model predictions. speed running and digging behaviour. The presence of a sandy sub- Conversely, given that the spiders hide in the small, soft soil mounds strate, particularly areas with soft sand, are critical for the effective made by the termites, which allow them to correlate their activity pat- capture of termite prey and subsequent digging to feed. A pitfall sur- terns with that of termites, the limiting resource could be microhabitat vey in grassland showed that A. amphalodes activity density was (termite mounds) availability, which might have driven niche partition- strongly correlated to that of Hodotermes mossambicus, but not to ing. Field observations on behavior and microhabitat use are needed to Trinervitermes trinervoides. Although narrowly associated with H. establish possible cryptic niche partitioning. For example, anecdotal mossambicus as prey, A. amphalodes also utilize sand mounds of evidence in the literature indicate differences in post-capture termite other organisms, including ants and moles, for retreat construction. processing. This could have implications for differential predatory pres- Recent studies using next generation sequencing showed that 99.8% sures. Even if evidence for niche partitioning is found, however, it of sequences extracted from the guts of A. amphalodes belonged to would only partially explain the distribution patterns seen in Ammox- H. mossambicus termites; this in spite of the presence of other ter- enus. Our aim is to provide possible explanations, including the still mites (Odontotermes sp. and T. trinervoides) and arthropods in the contentious sympatric speciation that could be further investigated to study area. Juveniles had a significantly greater diversity of prey se- explain the distribution and the level of sympatry seen in these spiders. quences than adults, although both males and females continued to feed on H. mossambicus as adults. Analysis of venom protein profiles Keywords: biogeography, competitive exclusion, niche partitioning, shows that A. amphalodes possesses a much more limited number of sympatric speciation proteins when compared to euryphagous spiders, providing evidence supporting a stenophagous diet on termites. We briefly describe sev- eral future studies that will investigate other aspects of Ammoxenus biology to support the evolution of stenophagy in this group of termi- The effect of elevation and time on mountain spider tophagous predators. diversity: a view of two aspects in the Cederberg mountains of South Africa [paper] Stefan Foord & Ansie Dippenaar-Schoeman Our aim was to test if long-term patterns in α and β diversity along an elevational transect on two aspects of a mountain are consistent through time using spiders as model organisms, quantify the role of elevation, time (seasonal and inter-annual) in explaining these patterns and partition the relative contribution of nestedness, species turnover F M Webb Peter and species loss in richness in explaining these diversity patterns. The Page 3 SANSA EWS 26 FEEDBACK ON CONGRESS—20th International Congress