Towards permanent conservation of biodiversity: the case of spider fauna of Switzerland and Slovenia

In times of accelerated anthropogenic destruction of natural habitats and global changes and the resulting extinction of species, humanity has found itself faced with urgent goals of how to preserve biodiversity to the greatest extent possible before it is completely lost. In our efforts to document, understand and preserve biodiversity, we biologists are often completely helpless in the face of the interests of capital and the greed of human society for changing the living environment in favor of one species at the expense of others. Although the problem is most pronounced in tropical regions, which are by far the richest in biodiversity, but at the same time are materially, politically and ethically unable to preserve nature, the problem is nevertheless also pronounced in the so-called developed world. In this pilot project, we envisage a completely new approach to the permanent conservation of biodiversity: we propose targeted search and identification of biological species, their permanent deep freezing in order to provide intact tissue to future generations, who will no longer find a certain proportion of species in nature, and extraction of the genetic record of the target species, i.e. the DNA of the organisms, for identification purposes. We propose spiders from Slovenia and Switzerland as a test organism, and the example of spiders would later be extended to other organisms. 

Globally, spiders represent one of the most species-diverse groups of animals. We know of over 41 thousand species of spiders, of which more than 2000 live in Europe. In this project, the target countries, Slovenia and Switzerland, both boast an extremely diverse biota, their spider faunas are thus well above the expected values ​​for such a geographical area in temperate climates. In Slovenia (with an area of ​​20,120 km2), we have so far recorded around 700 species, while in Switzerland (with an area of ​​41,285 km2), over 930 species are known. According to our estimates, approximately 600 species are common to both areas, while between 400 and 500 species are more geographically restricted. Among the latter are also narrow endemics, which are particularly represented in the Alpine and Karst areas. According to these estimates, both areas would therefore represent natural habitats for over 1,100 species. In our pilot study, we propose that in a relatively short time (18 months), through targeted field work, fresh biological material of spiders for a quarter of this biodiversity, i.e. 275 species, would be obtained. These species would be reliably identified by top experts within our partnership, who would also obtain the genetic record in the form of the mitochondrial CO1 gene, and then the tissues of the species and their DNA would be permanently frozen and thus preserved for future generations. 

Our target group is not limited sociologically, temporally, or geographically. Although the deep-frozen tissues will represent European spiders (collected in the geographical area of ​​Slovenia and Switzerland), potential users of the tissues or their genetic code will be experts in many fields, from ecologists, taxonomists, systematics to genetic engineers and experts in the field of nature conservation. Our data on the genetic code (DNA) of the target species will be freely available on the World Wide Web, which will enable genetic and taxonomic expertise to many researchers worldwide. 

The proposed project will be presented to the wider public as an innovative way to achieve concrete results in the field of nature conservation in a relatively short time through a coordinated pilot project. We believe that political and social pressures are not enough to represent the interests of nature, and that concrete and immediate action is urgently needed. Our initiative in partnership with the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Ljubljana and the Natural History Museum in Bern would represent the first step towards the permanent conservation of European biota. With the successful implementation of the pilot project, we intend to launch a much larger partnership between European and global institutions and agencies, which would take on responsibility for the permanent preservation of the living world in the coming years.