Spiders

The new North American Spider list will be out next month. It is available in book form for preorder on the web and today is the last day to get the reduced price (members). I suggest you buy it and that it be considered the new updated list to use.

Of course, I would like to see my copy first.

Site is (note the lower prepublication price is for AAS members only. Regular price is 45 dollars. Publication date is July 05.

http://faculty.vassar.edu/suter/spidermanual/

In general, I like the idea of following a world catalog of any group because I imagine that the person(s) creating a world list will have examined the similarities/differences among taxa from around the globe, and be in a better position to make lumping/splitting/placement decisions than those who may be specialists within a particular region but are less familiar with the global picture. But that's just my assumption - maybe not true in one or more instances.

Too bad a distribution list of states/provinces isn't given for each species, as it was previously for certain families (e.g. Lycosidae, Salticidae) in a North American list by the same author. Still, the World Catalog you mentioned is up to date (2005) and includes all synonyms, so it gets my vote.