List of spiders of Sri Lanka

The following list is of spiders recorded in Sri Lanka, a tropical island situated close to the southern tip of India.

Spiders

Holocneminus multiguttatus of family Pholcidae from Sri Lanka

Spiders (order Araneae) are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs and chelicerae with fangs that inject venom. Anatomically, spiders differ from other arthropods in that the usual body segments are fused into two tagmata, the cephalothorax and abdomen, and joined by a small, cylindrical pedicel. Unlike insects, spiders do not have antennae. In all except the most primitive group, the Mesothelae, spiders have the most centralized nervous systems of all arthropods, as all their ganglia are fused into one mass in the cephalothorax. Unlike most arthropods, spiders have no extensor muscles in their limbs and instead extend them by hydraulic pressure.

As of November 2015^[update], at least 45,700 spider species,^[1] and 114 families have been recorded by taxonomists. However, there has been dissension within the scientific community as to how all these families should be classified, as evidenced by the over 20 different classifications that have been proposed since 1900.^[2]

When considering the spider diversity in South Asia, which includes India, Pakistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Maldives, and Sri Lanka, there are not much extensive spider taxonomy has revealed. Only in India, there is a precise catalogue of spiders are documented by arachnologists. All the other South Asian countries, the scientific study is much lesser than that of India. In Sri Lankan spider fauna, most of the articles and publications on spiders were done by Eugène Simon, C. L. Koch in the past and currently by Channa Bambaradeniya, K. B. Ranawana, V. A. M. P. K. Samarawickrama and Ranil P. Nanayakkara.^[3] However, most of them were interested on tiger spiders of Sri Lanka - genus Poecilotheria,^[4]^[5] not much work done in other spider categories.^[6]

In 2012 IUCN National Red List of Sri Lanka, much more comprehensive study on spiders and other local fauna had taken place. Afterwards, two books named An introduction to common Spiders of Sri Lanka and Tiger Spiders - Poecilotheria of Sri Lanka by Ranil P. Nanayakkara were published in 2014 and 2013 respectively. Numerous publications and checklists have been made up since then and curiosity about the arachnid fauna arose in the country.^[7]^[8]^[9] Three new jumping spiders were identified in 2016.^[10] In 2018, nine new goblin spiders were identified from the country. With that, Sri Lankan goblin spider diversity increased to 45 described species in 13 different genera.^[11] In 2019, the genus Phintelloides was identified.^[12] Also, a checklist by Manju Siliwal and Sanjay Molur's detailed Checklist of Spiders of South Asia including 2006 revision of Indian spider checklist was published. This checklist provided all the described spider species of South Asia and part of South-East Asia as well.^[13] However, this checklist was published in 2007, making it rather outdated. In 2021, eight species of jumping spiders were identified.^[14] In 2020, two cellar spiders,^[15] and seven species of jumping spiders were described.^[16]

The following list provide the spiders currently identified in Sri Lanka. Due to being a very recent checklist, this list will be based on a checklist by Benjamin et al. (2012) among others, with the latest update being made in August 2020. This checklist was made by the Association for Conservation of Environment and Arthropods Sri Lanka, and encompasses a wide variety of referenced journals.

Currently, Sri Lanka has 589 species of spider, belonging to 50 families and 294 genera. Out of these 589 species, 318 are endemic spiders to Sri Lanka with 17 endemic genera.

Endemic species are denoted as E.