X JORNADAS DEL GRUPO IBÉRICO DE ARACNOLOGÍA Revision of the portuguese Eresus spiders (Eresidae, Araneae) Sérgio HENRIQUES (1,2), Milan REZAC (2), José CONDE (3) 1 Almargem, associação de defesa do património cultural e ambiental do Algarve 2 Laboratório de Aracnología, Departamento de Biologia, Universidade de Évora e-mail: henriquesbio@gmail.com 3 Department of Entomology, Crop Research Institute, Charles University, Prague 4 CISE - Centro de Interpretação da Serra da Estrela      Ladybird spiders (Eresus spp.) have fascinated scientist for centuries, but in spite of their appealing appearance and recognized conservation value, our knowledge on this group is incredibly poor, and even the taxonomy of Central European species has only recently been clarified.      In Portugal the genus is known since the 1920’s but apart from contributions to the distribution of Eresus kolari and Eresus sedilloti made at the time by Dr. Amélia Bacelar and latter by Dr. António Machado, no studies were made on this genus and so it remained for more than 50 years.      Unfortunately most specimens analyzed in the bibliography are lost and are even assumed to have been destroyed, and therefore no confirmation can be made on their identity, but recently collected specimens indicates that Portugal is the country with the largest known diversity on this genus, with several new species waiting to be described.      This work provides a revision of what is known, what has been discovered since and future prospects for this group in Portugal.