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NORMAN PLATNICK: Most of what scientists
know about the distribution of life on the planet
is based on the things that are large and obvious,
vertebrates and green plants.
They're the easiest to discover.
They're the easiest to document.
The problem though, is that those groups together
are only 3% of the total diversity of species
on the planet.
If we wish to conserve as much biodiversity as possible,
then we need to pay attention not just to the things that
are so easy to see but also to the ones that
are not so easy to see and tell us much more about the planet.
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We've come to Ecuador to try to find goblin spiders.
One of the reasons that we chose this particular family
as spiders is that they're so poorly known on a global basis.
That's because they're considerably smaller
than the animals that arachnologists typically
deal with.
The average spider that you collect
is somewhere between four and eight millimeters.
These animals are half that size or a third that size.
A majority of the goblin spiders are ground and litter dwelling
species.
NADINE DUPERRE: Right now, we're collecting litter.
And we're sifting through it to concentrate
the amount we can collect.
So basically just collecting all the litter
we can so we get more spiders.
NORMAN PLATNICK: Probably our bags worth, here.
NADINE DUPERRE: Good.
NORMAN PLATNICK: It's moist but not muddy.
If it's too dry, it's no good.
If it's too wet, it's no good.
This is OK.
Fieldwork is a messy enterprise.
And it is highly serendipitous, which
is part of what makes it fun.
NADINE DUPERRE: I always look a little bit
because if you see one, then it's a good sign.
It keeps you from-- you know, you go on a little bit more
if you see one running around.
OK, that's it.
That's one of them.
NORMAN PLATNICK: Excellent.
NADINE DUPERRE: So this is what we're looking for.
It's orange.
It's really small, 1.23 millimeter.
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NORMAN PLATNICK: As biologists, we
want to know every species on the planet.
NADINE DUPERRE: That's [INAUDIBLE]
NORMAN PLATNICK: Yeah, well.
And so we've undertaken the planetary biodiversity
inventory project to take groups that are poorly known,
like goblin spiders, and bring them up
to the level of the better known groups
so that we are better positioned to conserve biodiversity.
One of the advantages of being on an expedition
with a sizable group of people, like we have here,
is that people have different experiences
and different techniques.
Depending on the day and person, any one of those results
might be better than the others.
And so being able to have different people
doing them all in slightly different places really
increases the chances of finding what you're after.
We've been here about five working days at this point.
And I have not yet recognized any species as one
that we've studied before.
We won't know the details until we get back
to the lab and good microscopes, but this could be cool.
NADINE DUPERRE: After we came back from Ecuador,
we brought back with us some specimen of the spiders
we collected on the field.
And then, we go into really detail analysis of the spiders
to describe new species.
We look at the spiders under the scanning electron microscope,
which gives you a really precise photograph of the specimen
you're looking at.
Here we have a view of the complete spider.
So this is a male we collected in Ecuador.
Here you can see the carape, so the head of the spider.
We have six eyes.
And this one is very nice because in the middle,
there is a row of ornamentation and then they turn into lines.
So this is a good characteristic to recognize this species.
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All the spiders we collected are new species,
so they're not being found elsewhere.
And we were quite surprised because indeed you
could expect them to be a little bit in Peru,
a little bit in Colombia.
But so far we have all new species in Ecuador, yes.
NORMAN PLATNICK: Ecuador has a much larger number
of our goblin spiders than anyone ever anticipated.
But knowing the number of species in a given place
is only the beginning of understanding biodiversity.
If you have an area that has 200 species, but all 200
of those species are actually widespread over all
of Amazonian, say, then that area may not be as important.
Whereas an area that has only 75 species, but of those 60
occur nowhere else on the planet,
then you have reason to say this is an important area to save.
Conservation decisions are always judgments.
Obviously, we cannot save everything on the planet.
We have triage situation.
We have to decide what is most important to save.
But there is no way of knowing what
to save if you've never managed to collect them and know
that they're there.
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