A checklist of the spiders ( Araneae ) of the Chornohora Mountain massif ( Ukrainian Carpathians )

The present checklist of spiders native to the Chornohora Mts of the Ukrainian Carpathians is based both on literature-derived data and on material collected by the authors in 1999, 2006 and 2011-2014. The majority of these studies (approximately 80 %) were conducted in the upper montane forests, subalpine and alpine levels on the slopes of the main ridge and adjacent spurs and mountains. The study also covers glacial cirques and river valleys. A few spiders were collected from local villages. The list of spiders includes records from the collections of the Museum of Natural History of the Wroclaw University and Museum (Poland) and the Institute of Zoology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw. A total of 252 valid species from 22 families is known from the Chornohora Mt. massif.

The Chornohora Mountain massif is one of the most famous areas of the Ukrainian Carpathians.The first research on spiders in this region was conducted by Leopold Wajgiel, the co-founder of the Chornohora branch of the Tatra Society (1878).In his papers devoted to the fauna of Galicia, Wajgiel provided data on 9 spider species collected from the massif [Czarnogóra: coll.M. Łomnicki] (Wajgiel 1868).
At the turn of the 19 th to the 20 th century, a comprehensive collection from the Chornohora Mts was brought together by the famous arachnologist Władysław Kulczyński (based on material from his colleagues and friends).Some data were published in the work "Araneae Hungariae".Among them were 33 species from Mt. Petros (Pietroz: coll. Chyzer), and eight from Mt. Hoverla (Hoverla: coll.J. Pavel, J. Mathiasz; Chyzer & Kulczyński 1891, 1894, 1897, 1918).Unfortunately, the rest of the collection from this massif was never published and remains to be studied.Only information about a species from the Chornohora massif (field name Ardzheluzha: author's note), Zora distincta Kulczyński, 1915, was listed in the Catalogue of Spiders of Poland (Prószyński & Staręga 1971).
From 1912 onwards in some territories of the Chornohora Mts the government of Galicia began to create nature reserves and the territory of protected areas was increased, despite the changing territorial subdivision of Eastern Europe, as well as Transcarpathia.This initiated a series of new largescale inventory studies of the flora and fauna.In 1935 and 1939, Polish scientists produced checklists of many groups of invertebrates from the massif (Fudakowski et al. 1939).
Information about spiders was never published, and then the planned faunistic study of the territory was interrupted by World War II.Yet, the spider fauna of the massif under consideration is represented by twelve species deposited in the collection of the Polish arachnologist Stanisław Pilawski (Hoverla Mt., Breskul Mt., Dancer Mt., Rebra Mt., Shpytsi Mt., field names Zarosliak and Foreshchanka, mountain ranges Kukul and Rozshybenyk, vil. Voronenko;coll.: 1933-1938; Museum of Natural History, Wroclaw University).
From the 1950's onwards the araneological study was carried out by M. Legotai in the Zakarpats'ka Oblast.Information on distribution of 36 species of spiders in the Chornohora massif (Hoverla Mt., meadows Gropa and Menchul Kvasivs'kyi, field name Koz'meshchyk) was presented in her PhD work "The Spiders of the Ukrainian Carpathians" (Legotay 1974), and in several papers (Legotay & Tarasyuk 1964, Legotay 1958, 1959, 1973, 1989), most of which, unfortunately, did not specify collecting localities.
In 1979, some arachnological material was collected by A. Zyuzin in the Ukrainian Carpathians (within the Chornohora massif, mountains Hoverla and Petros, the Menchul Kvasivs'kyi meadow, field name Ozirnyi).Results of this study were included in his PhD thesis devoted to the wolf spiders of the genus Pardosa in the fauna of the European part of the USSR (Zyuzin 1981).
In 1999, S. Ovtchinnikov described a new subspecies of spiders from the Carpathians, including the Chornohora massif, Coelotes pickardi carpathensis Ovtchinnikov 1999 (Ovtchinnikov 1999), based on specimens collected by Y. Marusik and A. Zyuzin. In 1999-2006, numerous invertebrate specimens were collected by V. Chumak, V. Tymochko and V. Martynov from the territory of the Carpathian National Park and Carpathian Biosphere Reserve.Arachnological material (64 species of spiders from the Chornohora) was analyzed by E. Prokopenko; some of the spiders belonging to the family Linyphiidae were determined by V. Gnelitsa (Prokopenko & Chumak 2007).A study of spider communities in the subalpine green alder and pine scrubs (Chumak et al. 2007) deserves special attention, as the first comprehensive ecological account of spiders from the Chornohora Mts.
In total, 173 spider species have been reported from the Chornohora Mts, except for the collection by W. Kulczyński which will be the subject of a separate study.Therefore, in terms of the spider fauna the Chornohora seems to be one of the best investigated areas of the Carpathians.Although the aforementioned studies have been conducted since 1867, they were highly fragmented: most of the species remain known from one or two (rarely five or six) localities.The purpose of the present work is to summarize and complement the existing araneological data for the Chornohora Mts.Approximately 60 % of the Chornohora massif is a protected area, in particular, the territory of the Carpathian National Park and Carpathian Biosphere Reserve.Consequently, the present work will hopefully provide an effective data set that could characterize the status of the investigated habitat types and could also be used in the framework for nature conservation, ecological planning and management.
The Chornohora massif is located in the eastern part of the Ukrainian Carpathians, in the Polonyns'ki Beskydy area, on the verge of Ivano-Frankivs'k and Transcarpathian regions.The territory of the mountain massif is bordered by river valleys.The Chornohora is delimited: to the west by the Chorna Tysa River; to the north by the Lazeshchyna and Yablunytsia Rivers; to the north-east by the Prut River and its tributary, the Ardzheliuzha River, through the Vorokhta mountain pass to the Il'tsia River; to the east by the Chornyi Cheremosh River; and to the south by the Shybenyi and the Bila Tisa Rivers.The total area of the Chornohora is approximately 900 km 2 (Nesteruk 2003).According to the divisions adopted by the framework of Convention on the Protection and Sustainable Development of the Carpathians, the Chornohora is part of the two orographical units: Vysoki Polonyny Chornohory and Vorochtians'ka Verchovyna.
The Chornohora is the highest mountain group of the Ukrainian Carpathians.Its main range extends for about 40 km.The western part of the massif contains Mt. Petros (2020 m), from which extends a group of the lower mountains.The eastern section is a monotonous range with 11 summits over 1800 m (the highest peak is Hoverla -2061 m), at a minimum elevation of 1750 m above sea level (Nesteruk 2003;Fig. 1.).According to the climatic zonation of the Ukrainian Carpathians, the Chornohora massif is situated within the cold and cold-cool temperate zones.Duration of the summer period varies from 1 to 2.5 months at the lower montane zone; above 1000 m a meteorological summer is usually not observed (the mean daily temperature on the mountain summits is approximately +7 °C in July).The summer is characterized by considerable diurnal variations of temperature.Winter is the longest season, lasting 3-5 months at the lower montane zone, and 5-6 months in the upper montane, subalpine and alpine zones.The average winter temperatures in the Chornohora massif are between -3 and -6 °C.In winter months the frozen soil layer slowly reaches 60-80 cm.The maximum snow depth is 5 m; snow melts from April to May and June.Snow fields, which are formed by direct snowfall, avalanches and wind drift in the glacial cirques (often 10m deep) in cold years, may not melt before the next winter.Annual rain precipitation ranges from 500 to 1500 mm or more, 75 % of which may fall in rainstorms.The greatest rainfall is in the months of June and the first half of July (Stojko et al. 1982).
The Chornohora massif has four vegetation zones.In the lower montane zone (600 m to 1100/1200 m), usually beech (Fageta sylvaticae), fir-beech (Abieto-Fageta) and beech-fir-spruce (Fageto-Abieto-Piceeta) forests occur.Also common are secondary meadows.The upper montane zone (1100/1200 m to 1600/1650 m) in the western part of the massif most commonly has beech forests (Fageta sylvaticae), mountain hay meadows and pastoral ecosystems.In the eastern part, the spruce (Piceeta abietis) and fir-spruce (Abieto-Piceeta) forests dominate.The subalpine zone (1600/1650 m to 1800/1850 m) is represented by treeline ecotones, green alder and pine scrubs, secondary Vaccinium heaths and Juni perus thickets, subalpine tall grass communities and Nardus stricta swards.The alpine zone (1800/1850 m to 2061 m) is dominated by alpine heaths, alpigenous grasslands and moss and lichen communities.Large areas of the summits of the mountain ranges are covered with screes, consisting of fragments of rocks that have accumulated on the tops of mountains or on the slopes (Koziy 1972, Stojko 1993).
Orographic and climatic factors have a significant influence on the fauna formation of the Chornohora massif.The presence of four vegetation zones provides a considerable species diversity of invertebrates.In the alpine and subalpine zones, specific biotic conditions form the habitats of rare and endemic Carpathian mountain species of spiders.

Material and methods
The present checklist of 252 spider species for the Chornohora massif is based both on previously published data and on collections by the authors (1999,2006,(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014).Also included are data from the spider collections of the Museum of Natural History, Wroclaw University, in particular from 1933-1938, collected by Stanislaw Pilawski (MPUWr, coll. et det. S. Pilawski).In addition, some unidentified and unpublished specimens from spider collections in the Museum and Institute of Zoology Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw are included (MiIZ; the former collection of W. Kulczyński).Three species (Micrargus sp.Taranucnus sp. and Formiphantes sp.) are most likely new to science, and work on their descriptions is ongoing.
The study was conducted on the basis of standard collecting methods, such as Barber pitfall traps, entomological sweep-netting, hand-collecting and with the aid of pooter.Collecting was undertaken indifferent vegetation layers.Nomenclature follows the World Spider Catalog (2015).
Some species records remain unconfirmed as they are absent from modern spider collections.Data from this research have significantly complemented the information about the regional spider fauna at species, genus and family levels, and covered a significantly broader area of the Chornohora Mts. as compared with the earlier data.The annotated list presented below does not, however, provide a full faunistic list of the spiders from this territory; it only reflects the current state of faunistic knowledge to be further complemented by subsequent research.
The description of known localities for each species is divided in the annotated list into three parts: -(1) the known 'published data' from the Chornohora massif, (2) the unpublished data known from museum 'collections', and (3) the 'material' collected by the authors in 1999, 2006 and 2011-2014.All locality names for the material collected by the authors are listed in alphabetical order (Tab.1).(Balogh 1940).
The present work reflects the distribution of spider species in specific types of highland habitats, especially the spruce and beech forests, the mountain hay meadows, the subalpine swards (Nardus stricta), the green alder scrubs, the scrub (Pinus mugo), the subalpine (Vaccinium) and alpenrose heaths (Rhododendron myrtifolium), the alpigene tall grass communities, the alpigenous acidophilous grasslands, moss and lichen dominated mountain summits, the alpine wet rock grooves, the siliceous screes of the alpine and subalpine level, and banks of mountain streams.The subalpine active raised bogs (field names Tsybulnyk and Kizly) are endangered areas in the Ukrainian Carpathians.Therefore, the annotated list of spiders of the Chornohora massif could form a basis for prospective ecological research and analysis of the fauna of this region based on the principles of habitat concept of biodiversity protection.
Further study of spiders of the Chornohora massif should be directed towards an investigation of the lower montane zone, especially of the beech, beech-fir, beech-firspruce forests, and their secondary ecosystems.Particular attention should be paid to a study of spider communities of the glacial cirques as centers of biodiversity in the Carpathian region.

Editors' note
After typesetting the editors wondered about the term "herpetobium", which we found frequently used in the area of the former Sovjet Union.Klemm (1929) introduced it in Germany and mentions its origin from professor Dogiel, Russia/SU.But we could not find any Russian publication, which introduces it.Herpetobium means in fact "epigeic active" and belongs to this set of terms: Geobium, Herpetobium, Bryobium, Phyllobium, Anthobium, Aerobium.