Faculty of Biology postgraduate student discovered new spider species

Tigirekski Reserve is a comparatively young environmental organization, but is has already become a field for numerous scientific research conducted by specialists in the most different areas. They include scientists, who are actively working on the “inventory” of world’s biodiversity, or taxonomy. Their main objective is to find out whether all existing species have already been described by their predecessors or not. The discoveries of new species usually happen in hard-to-reach areas that had not been visited by the researchers before. Tigirekski Reserve territory is one of such areas. It was especially hard to ascend one the highest peaks of the Tigirekski Range – Razrabotnaya Mountain. Right here, at a height of 2,000 metres above sea level, postgraduate student Alexander Fomichev found the new spider species.

The spider species was given a name Parasyrisca volynkini Fomichev in honour of famous entomologist Anton Volynkin, who presented to Alexander Fomichev some of the materials concerning spiders, and helped to organize the expedition, in the course of which the young arachnologist has made his discovery.

The new species differs from the related species by the structure of its generative organs. It lives in stone streams – assemblages of rocks at the Tigirekski Mountains peaks. The related species inhabit drier and colder steppes of south-western Altai. Alexander has only caught one sample, but it is a male, so there is enough information to describe the new species.

The article has been published in prestigious journal Arthropoda Selecta. Besides the description of the new species, it also contains a list of 65 spider species collected in Tigirekski Reserve by different researchers in 2010-2014.

Earlier there had been new species of acari, millipede and violet found on the reserve territory. Big number of such discoveries is an evidence of extensive biological diversity of the reserve, as well as of its insufficient research and intensive current scientific work.