关键词: 分类学, 新属, 新种, 分布, 生物多样性

Abstract

Aim: Spiders are among the most common and abundant predators in terrestrial ecosystems. Regularly summarizing the new taxa of the Araneae will help disseminate recent achievements in the field of spider diversity. The aim of this paper is to provide a global tally of new spider taxa published in 2021.
Progresses: A total of 975 new taxa (including species in amber) were described in 2021, comprising 47 new genera and 928 new species. They belong to 81 families, with type localities spanning across 81 countries. The new taxa were reported by 304 arachnologists in 254 papers, published over 64 journals. China is the country where the most new species were discovered, accounting for 28.7% of the global total. Shuqiang Li of China has been the most prolific arachnologist, logging the highest number of new taxa, accounting for 21.8% of the global total. Digital images have become the most predominant means of illustration, with 95.2% of publications using photomicroscopy images. New species published with both sexes described (60.3%) outnumbered those described based on specimens described from either a holotype male or female. The contribution of Chinese arachnologists took up a lion’s share of the new taxa of spiders described in 2021 in the world. Altogether, they described a total of 330 new taxa, comprising 13 new genera and 317 new species belonging to 39 families, from 15 countries, including China, Myanmar, etc. These new taxa described by Chinese arachnologists made up 33.8% of the 2021 global aggregate, an improvement over the Chinese output during the 2016–2020 period, which averaged at 28.1% within that time frame.

Key words: taxonomy, new genus, new species, distribution, biodiversity