PhD Arthur Decae 2010 - Ghent Ecology - Universiteit Gent
PhD Arthur Decae 2010 - Ghent Ecology - Universiteit Gent
PhD Arthur Decae 2010 - Ghent Ecology - Universiteit Gent
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Epilogue<br />
Around the turn of the century Konrad Thaler (2000) published a paper discussing the<br />
Mediterranean spider fauna and the work of Paolo Brignoli. He concluded that,<br />
notwithstanding the enormous productivity of Brignoli and the fact that his research was<br />
largely focused on the Mediterranean our current knowledge of Mediterranean spiders still is<br />
very poor. This is particularly true for Mediterranean mygalomorph siders he noted. In this<br />
thesis ten new mygalomorph spider species and one new genus of Mediterranean<br />
mygalomorph spiders are named and described. More important however, the revisionary and<br />
biogeographical work, presented here, indicates that this is only a small fragment of the taxa<br />
yet to be discovered in this region. Large parts of the Mediterranean, including most of<br />
Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Israel, Syria, Turkey and the Balkan States are hardly known at all<br />
for their mygalomorph spider faunae and other regions such as Greece, Italy and Spain are<br />
only partly studied. Even knowledge on the mygalomorph spider fauna of southern France,<br />
where trapdoor spiders were already studied in the late 18 th century, is badly confused.<br />
In a time when scientists are trying to track the limits of the Universe, spend fortunes chasing<br />
subatomic particles and made giant investments to decode the human genome it is almost<br />
cynical to note how little we know about the creatures that live among us. Since knowledge of<br />
our world is a direct measure for the level of human culture, much cultural progress is still to<br />
be made by studying the smaller creatures around us.