European Arachnology 2000: Proceedings of the 19th Colloquium of Arachnology, Aarhus 17-22 July 2000

This book, dedicated to the influential Danish spider ecologist Edwin Ngaard, contains contributions by authors from 16 European countries, and reflects the current areas of interest for researchers working with spiders, scorpions and related animals in Europe. It contains 46 original research articles and reviews covering a wide range of disciplines such as ecology and conservation, behavior, physiology, morphology and systematics. A particular section is devoted to reproductive behavior, with papers on sexual selection, sperm competition is relation to the structure of female genitalia, emasculation and sexual cannibalism in spiders, and parthenogenesis in scorpions. Silk and the structure and construction of spider webs form another section. There are papers on sampling methods and faunistic analyses of the biodiversity and conservation value of spider communities from several types of habitats (forests, dunes, bogs etc.) in various European countries. Other papers deal with the value of spiders for agriculture, prey capture strategies, spiders parasites, life cycles, neuronal mapping of reflex behavior, the systematic classification of spiders and local faunistics.