Upon reading this I sent Chris an e-mail showing my interest in helping out. I then submitted some of my trapdoor research and showed him some of my experiences on Mt. Diablo and he has asked that I cover that area, writing out paperwork on the spiders' natural history, collecting various data, specimens, colony localities in the form of global positioning coordinates, etc. Unfortantely Mt. Diablo (and San Diego, which Kyle Dickerson is already covering) is the only place I have experience with Aphonopelma. I know they are elsewhere in CA, and I know many of you have access to colonies.
For Chris and his advisors to develop phylogenies and properly revise this genus, he has asked me to further "recruit" people who are able to go out into the field into areas where Aphonopelma are found (outside of Mt. Diablo). The most important information he is seeking are locales, IDEALLY GPS COORDINATES of the specimens found. This information may or may not eventually be public, but it is all for scientific research for those who do not already know of this major project going on (which in a nutshell is to revise and describe all of the Aphonopelma in the US and Mexico, which is certainly something that is needed and that many of us have been waiting for).
I will try not to put too much detail into this post, and so to sum it up, please e-mail me or Chris explaining your interest. I believe the thing he needs most is exact locations of where Aphonopelma are found here, in order to develop phylogenies, distribution map, and so forth. ANY HELP IS GREATLY APPRECIATED!!!
Please only message him if you know you can make the commitment and produce some very helpful information. Otherwise, he has asked me to post here so that you may send the localities to me so that I can organize it all into a table and forward it off to Chris. Again, GPS coordinates are most prefered. I do not know for certain how it works, but you will probably be recognized in the work for your contributions.
As for Mt. Diablo, I pretty much have that place tackled but it would be great if I could get a small and committed SFBATS team to meet at Mt. Diablo for the field work. It would end up being a couple long hot days measuring burrows, examining specimens, marking colonies, and so much more.
My e-mail is codewilster@yahoo.com but I will also answer pms here. Please do not flood Chris with proposals unless you are completely serious about helping out. I do not want to scare anybody out of helping, but he cannot really do anything with a brown Aphonopelma you found "somewhere".
Please e-mail me with questions as Chris has already explained to me what he needs. Now lets get our neat little favorite American genus revised, and maybe get some SFBATS names published in some scientific work!!!!
~Cody
_________________ A considerably greater amount of faith is required to believe that the complexity of this world happened by chance alone, rather than to believe there is a God.
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