Targeting a portion of central European spider diversity for permanent preservation.
Given the limited success of past and current conservation efforts, an alternative approach is to preserve tissues and genomes of targeted organisms in cryobanks to make them accessible for future generations. Our pilot preservation project aimed to obtain, expertly identify, and permanently preserve a quarter of the known spider species diversity shared between Slovenia and Switzerland, estimated at 275 species. We here report on the faunistic part of this project, which resulted in 324 species (227 in Slovenia, 143 in Switzerland) for which identification was reasonably established. This material is now preserved in cryobanks, is being processed for DNA barcoding, and is available for genomic studies.
Institute of Biology, Scientific Research Centre, Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Klemen
K
Candek
Institute of Biology, Scientific Research Centre, Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Matjaž
M
Gregorič
Department of Biology, Biotechnical faculty, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Rok
R
Kostanjšek
National Collection of Natural History, Office of Environment, Vaduz, Liechtenstein.
Holger
H
Frick
Department of Invertebrates, Natural History Museum, Bern, Switzerland.
Christian
C
Kropf
Institute of Biology, Scientific Research Centre, Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia ; National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, United States of America.
Matjaž
M
Kuntner
Conservation; DNA barcoding; biorepository; cryobank; faunistics