Faunistic diversity of the spiders in Montenegro (Arachnida: Araneae)

Abstract

Although the European fauna of spiders is relatively well studied, in the Balkans still have places for which little or almost nothing is known, especially Kosovo, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Montenegro. The spider fauna of Montenegro is still poorly known, and the number of relevant publications is very low, even with catalogs and quoted information is about 90. Only for the cave fauna has more in-depth observations. The aim of this study is to summarize and presents all available data of the spiders of Montenegro, both from the literature and from original records. A total of 144 spider species were collected and after incorporating literature reports, the number of identified species is 289, from 38 families. From them 84 species and two families are new for the country. The presented study provides the first annotated checklist and catalog of the spiders in Montenegro (as a result of a database with 1150 rows/records) with additional taxonomic and faunistic data.