Spinnen uit Cranendonck

This report describes the spiders collected with pitfall traps in 1974-77 and 1992-93 in “De Baronie Cranendonck” by members of the Dutch insect working group of the KNNV Eindhoven. This nature reserve is situated in the south of The Netherlands close to the border with Belgium and consists of heathlands and sand dunes. Our investigation was part of a project carried out by the formerly “Rijksinstituut voor Natuurbeheer”. Their main goal was to study if Icelandic ponies can be used to transform abandoned fields into their original natural state. To our own surpise we collected an impressive list of species unknown to our Dutch fauna. Most of them are now described in the European fieldguide [rob98] thanks to the fruitful collaboration of Aart Noordam and Michael Roberts. The area is of particular interest for uncommon species of the genus Zora and some rare wolfspiders like Arctosa figurata (Simon) and Alopecosa cursor (Hahn). The species Theridion uhligi, recently described by Martin [mar74], is also found in Cranendonck.