Arachnid Fauna (Araneae and Opiliones) from the Castro Verde Special Protection Area, southern Portugal

Background With the increasing recognition of the significance of arachnid conservation, it is crucial to allocate greater efforts towards implementing targeted monitoring programmes. Despite recent studies, our understanding of arachnid populations in Portugal remains limited. This study serves as the initial inventory of arachnids (Araneae and Opiliones) within the Castro Verde Special Protection Area (SPA) located in Beja, southern Portugal. The surveys were (c) Barrientos J et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. conducted during the spring of 2012 across 80 open grasslands that were grazed by cattle and sheep.