Sea spider (Pycnogonida)

Mohamed bin Zayed Species project number 170516011

The great forgotten: Conservation Assessment of the Iberian Sea Spiders (Pycnogonida)

We aim to perform multiple field surveys for each of the poorly sampled areas and to gather information on population abundance, distribution and ecology for all the species. We aim to map the distribution ranges of each species, using GIS tools and further geographical information of wider geographical scale (Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean) and worldwide. We already have geographical and bathymetric distribution ranges for each of the 65 species listed in the project (all georeferenced). Habitat and ecology (wide vs restricted niches) are described for all the species, though in more or less detail depending on the commonness or rarity. Then, we aim to create a group of experts including specialists worldwide devoted to this group and researchers involved in the Marine Biodiversity Unit (MBU) from the Global Marine Species Assessment (GMSA), which have been already contacted. The data will be used to perform the assessment in the IUCN red list and to start to require a protection status of these species and to delimitate the geographic areas of concern and hotspots of biodiversity, but also to review of the major threats, and future needs for research both at global and regional levels.

Project documents

• Figures 10 and 11. Extend of occupacy (EOO) and calculation of the FAO zones and LME areas
• Figs 12 and Tables 2 and 3. Results of the sea spiders conservation assessment
• Fig 6 and 7. Images of the sampling sites
• Figure 1. Study area
• Figure 2. Number of sampling sites of each 0.3º by 0.3º grid cell from the database already obtained in Soler-Membrives and Munila (2015)
• Figure 3. Species accumulation curves showing accumulation of pycnogonid species by area and region.
• Figure 4. Quantifying the distribution of Iberian pycnogonids. Distribution of sample occurrences of Iberian pycnogonids from Soler-Membrives and Munila (2015) in green. Red stars indicate the new de
• Figure 5. Image captions of the IUCN Species Information Service (SIS) on Sea Spiders (Pycnogonida)




Project 170516011 location - Spain, Europe