A Checklist of Manitoba Spiders (Araneae) with Notes on Geographic Relationships

An annotated list of spider species is compiled from museum collections and several personal collections. This list includes 483 species in 20 families; 139 species are new provincial records. The spider fauna of Manitoba is compared with that of British Columbia, Quebec, and Newfoundland. Manitoba's spider fauna is composed of northern elements (arctic or subarctic species), boreal elements (holarctic or nearctic), and eastern elements (mainly species of the eastern deciduous forest), and a few that are regarded as introductions from abroad. Forty-three species reach the limits of their ranges here. This relatively small province (6.5% of the total land mass of Canada) contains 59% of the Canadian spider families and 37% of the Canadian species.