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The American Museum of Natural History, New York, in collaboration with
The California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco   The University of California, Berkeley
The Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago   George Washington University, Washington DC
 
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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DEB 0613754. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
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The Goblin Spider PBI: Some 30 investigators from 10 countries are jointly tackling what may be the most ambitious project on spider systematics ever attempted: a Planetary Biodiversity Inventory (PBI) of the goblin spider family Oonopidae. Preliminary data suggest that the 459 previously described species represent only about 20% of the actual diversity of the group. The team is assembling and sorting the specimens available in collections and will acquire new material through 12 expeditions that will concentrate on securing samples of forest floor and canopy-dwelling species. Team members are building Internet-accessible databases of the species, all specimen locality data, and images; a new application will allow team members to enter descriptive data into a multi-user database, in a highly structured format that will allow direct use of that information in formal descriptions for publication, on species web pages, in phylogenetic analyses, in interactive keys, and in automated identification systems. This PBI is enabled by support from the National Science Foundation.