PhD Arthur Decae 2010 - Ghent Ecology - Universiteit Gent

Epilogue
Around the turn of the century Konrad Thaler (2000) published a paper discussing the
Mediterranean spider fauna and the work of Paolo Brignoli. He concluded that,
notwithstanding the enormous productivity of Brignoli and the fact that his research was
largely focused on the Mediterranean our current knowledge of Mediterranean spiders still is
very poor. This is particularly true for Mediterranean mygalomorph siders he noted. In this
thesis ten new mygalomorph spider species and one new genus of Mediterranean
mygalomorph spiders are named and described. More important however, the revisionary and
biogeographical work, presented here, indicates that this is only a small fragment of the taxa
yet to be discovered in this region. Large parts of the Mediterranean, including most of
Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Israel, Syria, Turkey and the Balkan States are hardly known at all
for their mygalomorph spider faunae and other regions such as Greece, Italy and Spain are
only partly studied. Even knowledge on the mygalomorph spider fauna of southern France,
where trapdoor spiders were already studied in the late 18 th century, is badly confused.
In a time when scientists are trying to track the limits of the Universe, spend fortunes chasing
subatomic particles and made giant investments to decode the human genome it is almost
cynical to note how little we know about the creatures that live among us. Since knowledge of
our world is a direct measure for the level of human culture, much cultural progress is still to
be made by studying the smaller creatures around us.