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Any field of endeavour requires retrospection after a period of substantial activity. This process provides a measure of what has been achieved and identifies future directions. Studies of spider diversity in South Africa have gone through an intense growth phase over the past ten years and reached a stage in its development where reflections on patterns and processes observed could provide meaningful input into the identification of further work. This chapter establishes the background and framework for such a discussion on the path to a more holistic conservation planning that includes invertebrates. Invertebrate conservation and diversity pose a significant challenge to planners and managers (Engelbrecht, 2010), and in spite of the central role that insects and arachnids play in terrestrial biodiversity, they still remain peripheral to decision-making processes. The reality is that, for Africa in particular, there are very few conservation areas that have both the resources and expertise to include invertebrates as part of their monitoring and management initiatives (however, see South African River Health Programme1). The advent of adaptive management, with a strong emphasis on experimental implementation of alternative management options (Johnson, 1999), has informed much of recent thinking and has cast a dim light on classical inventory studies that generate species lists. However, records of the numbers of species and their distribution provides a fundamental starting point for the conservation of biodiversity (Pullin, 2002). This view also ignores the contribution that basic inventories and alpha taxonomy make to the initial development of a field. This chapter will show that South African spider systematics and ecology are in an exploratory phase, and that traditional approaches to mapping diversity has enabled spider ecology in the country to generate species lists that are often resolved up to species level. Very few other studies on mega-diverse invertebrate groups in Africa can match this taxonomic resolution (see e.g. Formicinae). This descriptive phase will provide the

South African Spider Diversity: African Perspectives on the Conservation of a Mega-Diverse Group