The Department of Life Sciences

Phylum: Arthropoda  Class: Arachnida

Arachnids are a group of mainly terrestrial arthropods with eight legs. They include spiders, opiliones, scorpions, ticks, mites, whip scorpions, tailless whip scorpions and pseudoscorpions. They are well represented in Trinidad and Tobago with over a 1000 species of spiders and representatives of all of the other main arachnid groups. They range in size from the large hairy tarantulas with a body length up to 90mm to microscopic mites less than 0.08mm long.

For more information on arachnids in general click here

Trinidad & Tobago Arachnids

Spiders and scorpions are the most commonly encountered arachnids in Trinidad and Tobago, many people are scared of them but as controllers of insect pests they are quite beneficial to humans. However there are dangerous species such as the scorpion Tityus trinitatis which has been responsible for several deaths over the years.

For a guide to the spider families of T&T click here

For information on the tarantulas of T&T click here

For information on the opiliones (harvestmen) of T&T click here and click here

For information on the scorpions of Trinidad and Tobago click here

For a paper on the ticks of Trinidad click here

For profiles of selected species click here

UWIZM Collections

There is a small collection of spiders covering several families and there are specimens representing most of the other orders with scorpions and opiliones being fairly well represented. The majority of the specimens are in spirit but there are a few specimens that have been dried for display purposes. The collection of scorpions covers almost all species found locally and includes many collected by CAREC staff in the 1950s and 60s. There are also significant collections of mites and ticks from CAREC including a few paratypes. 

Highlights

Display of dried arachnid specimens

Last updated 12 June 2018