Spider Mites Web: : a database dedicated to the knowledge of an acarine pest family, the Tetranychidae

Building databases to collect information regarding pest families is particularly useful for an overall knowledge of their biology. Spider Mites Web is dedicated to the Tetranychidae, a family including about 1,250 species, of which 100 are considered as pests. Spider Mites Web is an online database, free, regularly updated, and continuously improved. Built to provide information on all described spider mites worldwide, the database was originally developed from work initiated by J. Gutierrez (Bolland et al., 1998). It was first devoted to taxonomic knowledge, so that it includes all the taxonomic data relating to the history of the nomenclature. It also includes all the host plants and geographical records. We have recently introduced some improvements by updating the user interface. Particularly, we have added a cartographic display of the distribution. This new tool is useful for understanding at a glance the world distribution of each species. Spider Mites Web presently includes (December 20, 2007): 1,250 valid species recorded, 1,256 references, 11,435 host records on 3,877 different plants and 5,219 records of geographic distribution. The Spider Mites Web provides an interactive user interface built for an easy and instinctive use. Three types of queries are available to retrieve information: i) by species, ii) by author and iii) by a cross search allowing multiple combinations of nomenclatural, host plant and geographical data. The Spider Mites Web also has a download section consisting of valid species, host plants and references. The Spider Mites Web is the result of a community work and will grow with the continued participation of this community