Spiders of Madagascar

By
Nicky Bay

9 June 2018

In June 2018 I led a week-long bug-hunting adventure to Madagascar, and managed to document over 20 families of spiders. This post serves as a checklist of spiders that I had encountered, and I am slowly getting them identified to genus where possible.

Madagascar is the fourth largest island in the world, situated off the coast of East Africa. It broke away from the Indian subcontinent when Gondwana was split some 88 million years ago . This allowed its native flora and fauna to evolve in isolation, resulting in an endemicism of over 90% ^[1]. This means that over 90% of the wildlife found in Madagascar cannot be found anywhere else on earth! Interestingly, several genera of spiders were common in Southeast Asia as well and that could be attributed to its pre-Gondwana-breakaway era.

Thank You

Thanks to the following for helping with the trip logistics and planning:

Madagascar Wildlife for all logistics arrangements. If you do engage them for your trip, let them know that you found them through this site!
Chien C. Lee for numerous helpful recommendations.
Serge Pasquasy for many recommendations and tips to find Archaeidae. 🙂

Special thanks to my awesome travel mates for sharing all the spiders that they found. It was a fantastic experience with such a cohesive and synergistic group, where everyone made sure the rest got a good chance to photograph whatever we found.

This trip wouldn’t have been the same without you, and I’m sure that we’ll remember this trip for a long time to come: Jason Jong, Timothy Smith, Bart d’Herde, Tom Astle, Paul DeZeeuw, Mok, Tom Myers, Roy Dunn and Cham. Thanks also to our drivers Patrick and Johnny, and our guides Nestor, Julien and his son!

This page documents a list of all the spiders that I’ve photographed and sorted in taxonomic fashion. Many identifications were possible with help from many kind folks, especially the following:

Matjaž Gregorič for Caerostris identifications
Ansie Dippenaar-Schoeman for Thomisidae identifications
Martin Ramirez for Trachelidae & Viridasiidae identifications
Miguel Machado for some Thomisidae identifications
Szuts Tamas for some Salticidae identifications
Fabio De Vita for Latrodectus identications
Daniel Austin for his Spiders of Madascar species checklist

Identifications are usually not very accurate when done from photos alone. Please let me know if you spot any mistakes. If you like this checklist, you would probably be interested in the Mozambique BugShot 2018 Checklist as well.

Macro Photography Equipment

All photos in this post were taken with the Nikon D850, Tamron 90mm and Laowa 2:1 100mm (not available yet), sometimes with a cctv lens attached. Almost all shots were lighted with a wireless macro flash system Meike MK-MT24 mounted on FotoPro DMM-903s flexible flash arms.

Legend

♂	Male
♀	Female
(Juv)	Juvenile

Phylum: Arthropoda Lankester, 1904

Class: Arachnida Lamarck, 1801

Order: Araneae Clerck, 1757

Family: Araneidae Clerck, 1757

Genus: Acrosomoides Acrosomoides Simon, 1887

Spiny orb weaver (Acrosomoides acrosomoides) - DSC_9457

Acrosomoides acrosomoides (O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1879) (Juv)

Spiny orb weaver (Acrosomoides acrosomoides) - DSC_9358

Acrosomoides acrosomoides (O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1879) ♀

Spiny orb weaver (Acrosomoides acrosomoides) - DSC_1639

Acrosomoides acrosomoides (O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1879) (Juv)

Spiny orb weaver (Acrosomoides acrosomoides) - DSC_9881

Acrosomoides acrosomoides (O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1879) ♀

Spiny orb weaver (Acrosomoides acrosomoides) - DSC_0233

Acrosomoides acrosomoides (O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1879) ♀

Spiny orb weaver (Acrosomoides acrosomoides) - DSC_1636

Acrosomoides acrosomoides (O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1879) ♀

Genus: Arachnura Vinson, 1863

Scorpion-tailed spider (Arachnura sp.) - DSC_9556

Arachnura sp. ♀ 9556

Scorpion-tailed spider (Arachnura sp.) - DSC_9545

Arachnura sp. ♀ 9545

Scorpion-tailed spider (Arachnura sp.) - DSC_0635

Arachnura sp. ♀ 0635

Scorpion-tailed spider (Arachnura sp.) - DSC_0642

Arachnura sp. ♀ 0642

Genus: Araneus Clerck, 1757

Orb weaver spider (cf. Araneus sp.) - DSC_0275

cf. Araneus sp. 0275

Orb weaver spider (cf. Araneus sp.) - DSC_0280

cf. Araneus sp. 0280

Genus: Argiope Audouin, 1826

Zigzag spider (Argiope ranomafanensis) - DSC_8004

Argiope ranomafanensis Bjørn, 1997 ♀

Genus: Augusta O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1877

Kite orb weaver (Augusta glyphica) - DSC_3004

Augusta glyphica (Guérin, 1839) ♀

Kite orb weaver (Augusta glyphica) - DSC_2956

Augusta glyphica (Guérin, 1839) ♀