CHECK-LIST OF THE SPIDERS OF CONNECTICUT 



Benjamin J. Kaston 



INTRODUCTION 



The author is engaged in preparing a monograph on the spiders 

 of Connecticut which will contain keys, descriptions and illus- 

 trations to aid in the identification of species found, or likely to be 

 found, in this State. As there is still much to be done before the 

 work is completed it may be some years before publication. In 

 the meantime, the opportunity becoming available to include a 

 check-list of species in Dr. Britton's supplement to the insect list, 

 it was thought well to publish that as being of some value in itself. 



The arrangement of the families follows that of Petrunkevitch's 

 latest system. The genera are arranged alphabetically for each 

 family, and the species alphabetically for each genus. A single 

 reference to where a description may be found is given for each 

 species, and the only synonyms indicated are those used by the 

 authors of those descriptions to which a reference is given. In the 

 difficult family Micryphantidae all of the genera established in 

 recent years by Bishop and Crosby are used here, and practically 

 all of the species references are to their various papers. While 

 some may object to accepting all of these genera it must be ad- 

 mitted that no other workers have investigated this family so 

 extensively. For the majority of the species in the remaining 

 families the reference given is to J. H. Comstock's Spider Book, 

 which, though at present out of print, still remains the most 

 readily available general work on North American spiders. 



Of the few states for which lists of spiders are available that 

 of New York compiled by Crosby and Bishop (1928) is by far the 

 most complete. Of course many species have been added since, 

 but it is of interest to compare the statistics based on the 1928 

 list with those of the present Connecticut list. These statistics 

 are presented in the accompanying table together with the figures 

 for Connecticut obtained from the List of New England Spiders 

 published by Miss E. B. Bryant in 1908. The genera of these 

 older lists have been arranged to conform with our present concept 

 of family groups. 



Practically all of the Connecticut records in Miss Bryant's 

 list are based upon the collecting of J. H. Emerton. The bulk of 

 the additions since are due to the collecting efforts of the present 

 author and his wife. A few, however, are based upon further 



