AltSU scientists discovered a new species of spider in Altai Krai

An assistant of the Department of Zoology and Physiology of the Institute of Biology and Biotechnology of Altai State University Alexander Fomichev published another article about spiders. This time, the article does not cover spiders of remote and hard-to-reach mountainous regions of Central Asia, the Far East or the Caucasus, but the araneofauna (spider fauna) of the flat part of Altai Krai.

It should be noted that the araneofauna of Altai Krai has been studied much worse than, for example, the araneofauna of the neighboring Republic of Altai. Oddly enough, this is especially true for its flat part. This situation arose due to the fact that most expeditions to study spiders (and other groups of arthropods) were carried out in the mountainous part of Altai, which was assessed as more interesting. The fact is that in the Altai Mountains, narrow-local endemism is extremely pronounced in some groups of spiders, a number of species are found only on one or two mountain ranges. It is much more interesting to study such phenomena. Thus, the lowland of Altai Krai was rejected for many years as less interesting. Information about its araneofauna (fauna of spiders) was described, in fact, only in three works of a graduate of Altai State University - Galina Azarkina (now an employee of the Institute of Systematics and Ecology of Animals of SB RAS).

In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic and related quarantine measures began, due to which expeditions to more remote and interesting regions, such as the countries of Central Asia, were temporarily impossible. Alexander took advantage of the break between expeditions and tried to fill in the existing gap in the study of the araneofauna of Altai Krai. In May 2020, a field trip was undertaken in the southwestern part of Altai Krai, that is, along the Kulunda steppe and the foothills of the Altai mountains. The choice of this particular part of the region was prompted by the Red Book of Altai Krai, published in 2016. According to this publication, it is in the south-west of the region that the points of finds of rare animals and plants are concentrated, often more typical of Central Asia than Siberia.

During the trip, Fomichev collected spiders in the Suetsky, Klyuchevsky, Mikhailovsky, Rubtsovsky, Loktevsky and Krasnoshchekovsky districtss. Various biotopes were studied: solonchaks, swamps, relict areas of the petrophytic steppe. Only agrocenoses were ignored. In total, 93 species of spiders from 18 families were found during relatively short field work. Of these, 33 species were first discovered in Altai Krai, 12 species were first found in Western Siberia.

One of the species turned out to be completely new to science. It was discovered in the valley of the Kizikha River, which forms a beautiful rocky canyon in the Rubtsovsk district. This spider belongs to the family of wolf spiders (Lycosidae) - it does not spin trapping webs, it is an agile hunter. The new species reaches a rather large size - two centimeters in leg span. This wolf spider lives in solitude, crawling out to hunt on the walls of coastal cliffs at night.
Alexander named this new species Pardosa ogudovi, after his school friend Sergei Ogudov, a philologist and leading researcher at the State Film Fund of Russia. It is interesting to note that according to morphological data, the closest relative of Pardoza Ogudov lives on the distant Saur Range in Kazakhstan. The article was published in the journal Acta Biologica Sibirica.

The discovery in Altai Krai of a new species of relatively large and noticeable spiders once again emphasizes the poor knowledge of the fauna of this region and indicates the prospects for its study. In total, more than 300 species of these predatory animals have been found on the territory of the region so far.