Following Amalie Dietrich’s path: Arachnids of fragmented rainforest systems in Queensland, Australia
Amalie Dietrich was an explorer in the 19th century and one of the first women to explore the Australian continent as a naturalist and collector. Dietrich arrived in Brisbane but travelled further North and inland for more than a decade to collect plants and animals. Her spider collection is extremely rich and still a major resource for taxonomic research. We are currently collaborating with the Queensland Museum in Brisbane, Australia to better understand trends in the diversity and distribution of spiders since European settlement. When Dietrich collected her spiders some 150 years ago, most of the habitats were still intact and primary rainforests but most of her original collecting sites are now cleared for agriculture or heavily modified by urbanisation, and heavily fragmented. The current project aims to recollect focal groups and compare today’s biodiversity patterns with the past in order to document changes over time.