CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Araneidae is known for building orbicular webs. Their association with vegetation may render them sensitive to environment disturbances such as urbanization. We report the Araneidae fauna in 24 green spaces of the city of Córdoba, in spring and summer. We collected samples with G-VAC (vacuum cleaner) and tapping on the vegetation over entomological umbrella. 85% of the collected specimens were immature and subadults. The proportion of immature was higher at sites far from the city center. Adults were determined at a specific level. Eight genera, 8 species and 4 morphospecies were identified. In Argentina, 202 species of Araneidae have been reported from 35 genera. For the province of Córdoba, 31 species belonging to 12 genera have been recorded, of which we detected Alpaida versicolor, Argiope argentata, Larinia tucuman, Metepeira gressa and Ocrepeira lurida. To our best knowledge, Araneus aurantiifemuris, Araneus omnicolor, Ocrepeira holmbergi and Mecynogea genus had not yet been cited for the province of Córdoba. Although the number of species found is relatively low in relation to the total reported for Argentina, the species accumulation curves and coverage analysis indicated that these samples adequately represent the araneid fauna that can be obtained by the chosen sampling methods.