Last Monday was the warmest it’d been in a while—over 10°C!—so as soon as I was done with stuff for the day, I headed out for a bit of afternoon “spidering”.
Continue reading Field journal: March 9, 2020
Arachnews: March 16, 2020
In this week’s roundup of arachnid art, news, and science:
- amazing nature photos (including two possibly undescribed species!)
- the latest #PruittData developments
- breaking down that mouse vs. scorpion fight from Netflix’s Earth at Night
- a new genus of (adorable) African jumping spiders
- the “are horseshoe crabs arachnids?” debate returns
Arachnews: March 9, 2020
New issues of Systematic and Applied Acarology, Experimental and Applied Acarology, and Acarologia means lots and lots of mite papers this week. There’s also nematodes, hair- and/or eyebrow-raising medical case studies, pretty spider photos, bacterial endosymbionts, and more.
Arachnews: March 2, 2020
In this week’s roundup of all things arachnid (mostly spiders this week, though):
- cool nature photos and videos; egg sacs seem to be a theme
- debunking the latest viral scare about cork-lid trapdoor spiders
- research about not-so-parasitic mites, medical uses of venom, and tarantula embryonic development
- extremely weird new species
…and more!
Arachnews: February 24, 2020
The latest Arachnews is up! In this week’s roundup of arachnid photos, art, news, and science:
- research jobs! upcoming conferences and events!
- new Zefrank video—and it’s on peacock spiders
- what to do about mites on your tarantula
- a wide range of ecology papers (arachnid vs. arachnid, arachnid vs. nature, arachnid vs. self)
- newly described species, including freaky fossil spiders
…and more!
Arachnews: February 17, 2020
The latest edition of Arachnews is short, sweet, and only a little gruesome. In this week’s roundup of arachnid art, news, and science:
- spider valentines
- a wonderful intro to social spiders
- prey-attracting patterns
- Asian net-casting spiders reclassified
…and (just a little) more!
Arachnews: February 10, 2020
In this week’s Arachnews:
- #PruittData hits the mainstream media, plus more insight from biologists
- 3D horseshoe crab fossils
- lots of new research on medical applications of scorpion and spider venom
- some absolutely gorgeous tarantulas
- a truly bonkers paper on spider husbandry
…and more!
Arachnews: February 3, 2020
In this week’s Arachnews:
- a roundup of #PruittData news
- Sydney funnel-web season in Australia
- jumping spiders in eyeliner
- the secret to capturing moths with spider silk
- new species named after mathematician Cedric Villani; Gollum; Mithra; and the Gullah and Amazigh people
…and more!
Arachnews: January 27, 2020
In this week’s Arachnews:
- a surprising discovery about dragline silk
- how to extract and observe face mites (you don’t need much more than a microscope!)
- the evolution of aquatic spiders
- circadian rhythms in spiders and mites
- as always, new species and geographic records
…and more!
Arachnews: January 20, 2020
This week’s Arachnews is a shorter one, as I’m catching up on a backlog of papers to sort. In this edition: charismatic Habronattus jumping spiders, the return of Silkhenge, fallout of the Australian bushfires, the latest volley in the are-horseshoe-crabs-arachnids debate, and more!