Five-Year Monitoring of a Desert Burrow-Dwelling Spider Following an Environmental Disaster Indicates Long-Term Impacts.

ABSTRACT: Deserts are characterized by unpredictable precipitation and extreme temperatures. Their fauna and flora are sensitive to anthropogenic environmental changes, and often recover slowly from environmental disasters. The effects of oil spills on the biota of desert regions, however, have scarcely been studied. We predicted that terrestrial invertebrates suffer long-term negative effects from an oil spill, due to their close association with the substrate. Thus, we investigated the effects of two oil spills that occurred in 1975 and 2014 in the hyper-arid 'Arava desert (Israel), on a spider that constructs silk-lined nests in burrows in compact, sandy soil in this extreme desert habitat. The spider, Sahastata aravaensis sp. nov. (Filistatidae), is described herein. We assessed spider burrow ab

SUBMITTER: Gavish-Regev E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8780495 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature