Publications

Journal of Arachnology (JoA)

The Journal of Arachnology (ISSN 0160-8202), a publication devoted to the study of Arachnida, is published three times each year by the American Arachnological Society. Subscriptions accompany society membership or may be purchased by institutions (click here for membership/subscription information).

All issues of JoA are available on-line.

  • Anyone can browse all JoA contents. However, access to the three most recent issues is for current active members only except in cases where the author(s) purchased immediate open web access or in certain invited articles.

  • All issues older than one year are freely available to all.

American Arachnology

American Arachnology is the official newsletter of the American Arachnological Society and is distributed biannually to members of the society. You can access issues at American Arachnology

Books and Guides

Spiders of North America - An Identification Manual 2nd Edition

Edited by Darrell Ubick, Pierre Paquin, Paula E. Cushing, & Vince Roth. Original drawings by Nadine Dupérré

Spiders of North America: an Identification Manual is now available as an epub!

You can purchase this manual as an electronic publication through amazon.com. Amazon sells epubs only as Kindles. If you do not have a Kindle reader, you can purchase an e-version of the manual directly from the publisher, Baker & Taylor publishing. The e-version retails for $39.99 US. Proceeds from the sale of this e-version of the manual directly support the American Arachnological Society.

You can purchase the hard-copy, spiral-bound 2nd edition of Spiders of North America: an identification manual. The hard-copy retails for $95 US from online booksellers.

The 2nd edition of Spiders of North America: an identification manual (SNAIM) is available to AAS members for $50 USD. This book retails for $95 USD.

You must be a member of AAS to take advantage of this offer. Please proceed to https://www.americanarachnology.org/society/members-area/ and click on “Spiders of North America”

**NOTE** If the shipping address is different than what you use for PayPal, then please send the Membership Secretary (membership@~@americanarachnology.org) an email with the correct shipping address to use for the book. You must also include an email address for the order to be processed!
Shipping within the U.S. is two weeks, outside the U.S. is three to five weeks. If you are not yet a member of the AAS, consider joining in order to take advantage of this discount offer.

General information

The 2nd edition of this beautifully illustrated guide to the spiders of North America, north of Mexico, provides updated keys and information about this important part of North American fauna. An indispensable reference for anyone interested in spider diversity or identification. This updated edition provides more than 1,400 illustrations and keys to the genera in 71 spider families and more than 600 genera. Taxonomic changes since the publication of the 1st edition in 2005 are reflected in every chapter. The manual includes 76 chapters and information including:

  • An introduction to spider morphology, natural history, collecting techniques, and preservation methods
  • An overview of the current status and most recent developments in spider phylogeny and evolutionary history
  • An etymological dictionary explaining the derivation of the names of spider genera and families
  • A well-illustrated glossary
  • A pronunciation guide to the names of common taxa
  • A complete bibliography

This is the first completely revised version of the manual since its original publication in 2005. Note that this is not a photo-ID guide to spiders; it is intended to aid in accurate identification by providing details of spider morphology/anatomy. A guide to morphology used in classification is provided in the introduction. The information on spider biology and identification make this manual especially suitable for both amateur naturalists and professional arachnologists.

Darrell Ubick is a curatorial assistant in the department of entomology at the California Academy of Sciences. He is  a well-known spider taxonomist who has published on a variety of taxa. His recent research focus has been on spiders in the family Oonopidae.

Pierre Paquin is a well-known spider taxonomist with an expertise on cave fauna. He and illustrator Nadine Dupérré have published numerous articles and identification manuals focused on the spider fauna of Canada.

Paula Cushing is a curator of invertebrate zoology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. Her research focus is on the systematics and taxonomy of camel spiders in the arachnid order Solifuge. She has also published on spider-ant symbioses.

Vince D. Roth was born in 1924 and died in 1997. He began working on a spider identification guide over four decades ago and published the original predecessor of Spiders of North America, titled Spider Genera of North America in1982. Spiders of North America: An Identification Manual is a direct result of Roth’s pioneering work.

Common Spiders of North America
Common Names of Arachnids (2003)

This publication is intended as a companion reference, for Arachnida, to the list of Common Names of Insects & Related Organisms published by the Entomological Society of America (ESA).

COMMON NAMES COMITTEE