Preliminary Results on the Project of Medically Important Spiders in the Aguascalientes State, Mexico.
Posada-Baltazar, lbeth and Avila-Villegas, Héctor
Departamento de Biología. Centro de Ciencias Básicas, Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes, México
The order Araneae has 105 described families, all of them have venom glands, except for the Uloboridae and Holoarchaeidae. Although most spiders have venom glands, they are not necessarily dangerous to humans for several reasons: the venom may not contain toxic fractions, the quantity of injected venom could be insufficient to cause envenoming, the chelicerae may not be strong enough to penetrate the skin, and the chance of spider contact with humans resulting in bites is very low. Thirty-eight genera have been reported to cause human envenoming worldwide; 20 of them are from Mexico, but only two, Latrodectus and Loxosceles are considered by the World Health Organization as being responsible for severe human envenoming. In Aguascalientes there are few reports on spider diversity and there is no complete information about their medical importance.
Spiders were collected from the field and houses by Gaviño method, stored in bottles in 70% alcohol, and identified by the Kaston (1972) taxonomic key. The preliminary results of this research, based on the 20 venomous genera reported in Mexico, comprise 10 families, 14 genera (including Latrodectus and Loxosceles), and 7 species.
Given the small quantity of information on spider diversity and on their medical importance in Aguascalientes, basic taxonomic research is needed as a basis for further and more complex projects to provide useful information for the improvement of medical treatment of these arthropod envenomings.
Publication Dates
-
Publication in this collection
08 Oct 2002 -
Date of issue
Dec 2001
