This month in arachnid news: SpiderCon ’19, tarantula trafficking, horseshoe crab evolution, honeybee mites, newly described species, and more.
- The International Society of Arachnology held a conference in Canterbury, NZ this month. So it was Spider Twitter Christmas, basically. Check out some press coverage, or scroll through #Arachno19 for a play-by-play; many thanks to Sebastian Echeverri (@spiderdaynight) for livetweeting so much of it!
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Roses are red,
Arachnids are awesome,
A Peruvian tarantula
was seen preying on an opossum. [Paper.] -
Reflective spider eyes—like those of modern-day wolf spiders and other night hunters—have been found fossilized for the first time, in Cretaceous-era stone from South Korea. [Paper.
Not all arachnids are spiders, you know!
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The mite Varroa destructor has devastated honey bee populations worldwide. It was long thought to feed on the hemolymph of bee larvae and pupae. However, a team of researchers has discovered that V. destructor is feeding on the fat body (a special organ) in adult bees. [Paper.]
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Horseshoe crabs—long thought to be a sister lineage to arachnids—actually are arachnids, argues a new paper from arachnologists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. This complicates the story of arachnid evolution: “the scenario of a single and irreversible colonization of the land by an arachnid ancestor has become untenable”. I did a read-along Twitter thread and it got a bit popular. [Paper.]
New species
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Birupes simoroxigorum, a gorgeous newly discovered tarantula from Malaysia, seems to have been poached by the tarantula breeders who collected it. The collectors are now selling wild-caught B. simoroxigorum as captive-bred, for high prices. And the British arachnologists who officially described the species may have broken the law by working with illegally collected specimens.
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Ceratogyrus attonitifer, a remarkable tarantula with a soft, bulbous horn, has been discovered by scientists with the Okavango Wilderness Project in Angola. [Paper.]
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Unusually sociable mixed-species spider colonies have been found in Bali, Indonesia. (“The largest and densest colony discovered in the field consisted of ≥ 100 individuals of both Chikunia species occupying every single leaf of a couple of small banana trees located next to a pigsty.”) [Paper.]
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A stunning new species of widow spider, the Phinda button spider, has been found in the sand forests of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. No official description has been published yet, but do read the linked blog post for the whole story of its discovery and details of the spider’s life history.
Got any spider scoops? Leave a comment or drop me a line.