Endangered Spiders

Endangered Spiders

An endangered species is “a species at risk of extinction because of human activity, changes in climate, changes in predator-prey ratios, etc., especially when officially designated as such by a governmental agency such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service”. A spider is a member of the order Araneae, one of many orders within the class arachnida, meaning it has a body consisting of two segments, a cephalothorax and an abdomen, as well as eight legs. All spiders are predators that feed off insects, and some larger species have been known to catch small reptiles, birds, and amphibians (Levi and Levi, 2002).Until recently, insects and arachnids have not been considered for inclusion on threatened and endangered species lists. It was not until 1994 that most invertebrates were even recognized as being just as vulnerable as other fauna. It is because of this that there are very few species of spiders listed as threatened or endangered and many are simply classified as “undetermined” .