The Spider Parasite Digital Research (SPDR) Collection maintains and preserves spider-parasite pairs, each identified, sequenced, georeferenced, and photographed and all provided freely online in a searchable database. It is meant to serve as both a biodiversity collection and a catalog of ecological interactions. The collection contains fungi, nematodes, bacteria, and parasitoids, all maintained alongside their spider hosts. All specimens will be digitized and freely available along with measurements, locality, and sequencing data. The SPDR Collection will also serve as an archive for literature associated with spider-parasite interactions and photographs of infected spiders from around the world.

 

Details on the SPDR Collection online launch are coming soon!

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If you find any spider parasites in the field or emerging from lab animals, please contact us. We will gladly give those specimens or photographs of them a home in this collection.