Occurence of spiders (Araneae) and ants (Formicidae) collected from northern Ghanaian mango orchards and forest savannah

Sampling event Observation
Latest version published by Finnish Museum of Natural History on Oct 1, 2025 Finnish Museum of Natural History
Publication date:
1 October 2025
License:
CC-BY 4.0

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Description

The dataset contains occurrence data of 36 species and 28 morphospecies of spiders (Araneae) and 40 species and 24 morphospecies of ants (Formicidae) collected from ten sampling points in northern Ghana during Oct-Nov 2022. The total sample size is 288 samples of spiders with 438 mature individuals and 782 samples of ants with 7859 individuals. The dataset contains collection information (locality, habitat, collecting method, time, coordinates, collectors, etc.) and sample information (collection code, count, sex, remarks, etc.). Data users should not attribute meaning to the names of the occurrence record identifiers used in this dataset. The identifiers used reflect an early iteration of the study design which is not relevant to the published data. This work was part of the project SustInAfrica and funded by the EU Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement 861924.

Data Records

The data in this sampling event resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 1,070 records.

This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.

Versions

The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is Finnish Museum of Natural History. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) License.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 1fce4fef-90f9-44b4-b459-017d0090a271.  Finnish Museum of Natural History publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by GBIF Finland.

Keywords

Samplingevent; Observation

Contacts

Veikko Yrjölä
  • Point Of Contact
  • Staff
Finnish Museum of Natural History
Veikko Yrjölä
  • Point Of Contact
  • Staff
Finnish Museum of Natural History
FI
Pedro Cardoso
  • Point Of Contact
  • Staff
Finnish Museum of Natural History
FI

Geographic Coverage

Africa, West Africa, Ghana, Northern region

Bounding Coordinates South West [9.305, -1.079], North East [9.693, -0.534]

Taxonomic Coverage

Animalia, Arthropoda, Arachnida, Araneae, Insecta, Hymenoptera, Formicidae

Order Araneae (Spiders)
Family Formicidae (Ants)

Temporal Coverage

Start Date / End Date 2022-10-06 / 2022-11-14

Project Data

No Description available

Title SustInAfirca
Funding EU Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme Grant Agreement 861924

The personnel involved in the project:

Veikko Yrjölä

Sampling Methods

In Kumbungu, a small town 20km northwest of Tamale (9°32'43.9"N 0°56'06.9"W), five 30 by 30m plots were each sampled with 32 pitfall traps and four Malaise traps. These plots were further divided into four approximately 10 by 10m subplots with eight pitfall traps and one Malaise trap. In Kumbungu, pitfall traps were grouped by subplot, with eight traps combined into a single sample. In Dallung, a small town 30km northwest of Tamale (9°37'57.8"N 1°00'27.1"W), a smaller 10 by 10m plot was sampled with eight pitfall traps and one Malaise trap, with each pitfall trap treated as an individual sample. In addition to these two mango orchards, a partly forested savannah in the Sinsablegbinni Forest Reserve, located 25km east of Tamale (9°23'26.5"N 0°36'01.4"W), was sampled with four 50 by 50m plots, each with 48 pitfall traps and one Malaise trap. In the forest plots, pitfall traps were grouped into sets of four per sample, yielding 12 samples per plot.

Study Extent Sampling took place in three localities near the town of Tamale, northern Ghana. Pitfall and Malaise trapping was preformed in October-November 2022 in Sinsablegbinni Forest Reserve and mango orchards in villages of Kumbungu and Dallung.

Method step description:

  1. After the trapping, the material was stored in 96% ethanol and shipped to Helsinki, Finland, where the focal taxa were sorted and identified to species or morphospecies level. A maximum of ten individuals of each (morpho)species were collected, labelled, measured and stored in the collections of the Finnish Museum of Natural History (Luomus), while the rest of the material was sent back to the country of origin for further inspection. The abbreviations used for morphological measurements in dynamicProperties are from https://www.antwiki.org/wiki/Morphological_Measurements.

Additional Metadata

Associated specimen records can be found in https://www.gbif.org/dataset/3c40bd29-eb8e-4a0d-93c5-3cb1b7204a4f and https://www.gbif.org/dataset/afc5826a-b29b-4edb-9618-11c24df5fa83

Alternative Identifiers 1fce4fef-90f9-44b4-b459-017d0090a271
https://ipt-dev.laji.fi/resource?r=veikko