Media release

From: Queensland Museum

New spider project aims to describe 100 new species

Queensland Museum Network Arachnologist Dr Jeremy Wilson has an ambitious plan to describe over 100 new species of spider over three years.

“Our new project is on a group commonly known as ‘wishbone spiders’. These are burrowing spiders that live throughout dry and tropical regions of Australia, and we estimate there are over 100 new species that we will describe,” Dr Wilson said.

“We call them wishbone spiders because many of them have two entrances to their burrow – a main entrance and a second hidden entrance that the spider uses as an escape chute. These two entrances give the burrow a y-shape, like a wishbone.”

Dr Wilson was recently awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship Grant as part of the Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS) National Taxonomy Research Grant Program and will spend the first 12 months of this project based at Queensland Museum working alongside the museum’s Principal Scientist, Dr Michael Rix.

Work has already begun on the project, which is also supported by Project DIG, a partnership between the museum and BHP and BMA. Dr Wilson, Dr Rix and Dr Terry Miller recently returned from the first field trip of the project to Central Queensland.

Dr Wilson said the field trip resulted in 24 new specimens, 8 of which will be critical for the project.

“Our goal with this first field trip was to find new specimens of the first species of wishbone spider ever described,” Dr Wilson said.

“This particular spider was first described in 1873 from around the town of Bowen, so we went searching in several habitats around Bowen to try to find it again.

“We have to understand what the currently known species of wishbone spiders look like so that we can recognise new species, that’s why we returned to the location of the first species ever described.

“There are 46 named species in the genus, but we estimate there are over 100 species still to be described.

“We collected several species of wishbone spider from near Bowen. One of them is the species that was described in 1873, and the others are probably new species. We also collected several species of trapdoor spiders and tarantulas.”

Many new species of wishbone spider occur in Queensland, which is why Dr Wilson is based at Queensland Museum now. But the majority of the new species are known from Western Australia, and that’s why Jeremy will be based at the Western Australian Museum and the University of Western Australia for the final two years of his Fellowship.

Dr Wilson said the arachnology team at Queensland Museum Network had provided great support throughout his Ph.D. several years ago, and he’s looking forward to working with the museum again.

“I feel incredibly lucky to have the support of Project DIG and the Queensland Museum, and to be able to keep working with the arachnology team to discover and describe new spider species in Queensland,” Dr Wilson said.

Dr Rix who is a Joint Investigator within the project, will continue to be based at Queensland Museum throughout the three years.

“This is an amazing project to be a part of, with a principal aim of performing a complete taxonomic revision of the Australian endemic mygalomorph spider genus Aname,” Dr Rix said.

“Using molecular sequencing we will be able to study the evolution of the group across Australia, which will be very exciting.”

The pair of arachnologists will soon embark on a 15-day field trip to tropical Queensland to collect more samples to aid in the research.