No one is surprised, instead all the arachnologists are thinking “Cool!” Scientists in the Amazon captured a video of a mygalomorph spider chowing down on a young mammal. Mygalomorphs (tarantulas, funnel web spiders, trap door spiders) are big arthropods that will kill and eat anything about their size that they can ambush, so they’ll eat other arthropods, small birds, reptiles, and yes, mammals.
It’s hard to recruit students for research projects when you’re off on sabbatical. I’ve got one lined up so far, but I have ambitious plans for the summer and would like to get one or two more, so I’ve put together a recruitment poster.
Maybe I should have used a scientifically accurate close-up of a spider face instead of something bright and cartoony, but I have to get them into the lab first. Then they’ll learn to love our new arachnid reality.
My wife just interrupted me and told me I had to go to the store for various items. Very well then; I also have to throw dinner together, so maybe I’ll get a special treat or two.
The recipe looks fairly straightforward, although they don’t list the ingredients. It looks like green onion, garlic, peppers, cooking oil — I’ve got all that already — oh, is that Haplopelma? I’m fresh out. I wonder if they have any in stock in a small rural midwestern grocery store, or if I’m going to have to go to Cambodia to pick up some?
I’ll probably have to fix something else for Mary’s dinner, since I don’t think I can zip to Phnom Penh and back in time for my other evening plans (gonna check out Alita: Battle Angel at the Morris Theater). It’s too bad, I’d really like to try that sometime.
I just submitted a proposal on Monday for in-house funding for student research this summer and next year, specifically to assemble a Spider Squad to do a local survey of spider taxa and numbers. I cited the Sanchez-Bayo and Wyckhuys article as evidence that there are grounds for concern about declines in arthropod numbers, and argued that spiders are a good proxy for insect populations, because they’d also give us a perspective on those non-charismatic insects, not just butterflies and bumblebees, that form their food supply.
I just this morning got around to reading Ed Yong’s summary of the Insect Apocalypse, and I agree completely. The review suggests that it’s all bad news, that we should be concerned, and that we should be studying this more thoroughly, but that the panic over insect armageddon is grossly over-inflated. Nothing is going to make insects go extinct, short of a planet-sterilizing impact with a world-killing asteroid.
The Sanchez-Bayo and Wyckhuys review is fine, it’s real data, but it’s not necessarily representative. So what do we need to do? Fund more science!
She and others hope that this newfound attention will finally persuade funding agencies to support the kind of research that has been sorely lacking—systematic, long-term, widespread censuses of all the major insect groups. “Now more than ever, we should be trying to collect baseline data,” Ware says. “That would allow us to see patterns if there really are any, and make better predictions.” Zaspel would also love to see more support for natural-history museums: The specimens pinned within their drawers can provide irreplaceable information about historical populations, but digitizing that information is expensive and laborious.
“We should get serious about figuring out how bad the situation really is,” Trautwein says. “This should be a huge wake-up call, and we should get on the ball instead of quibbling.”
What a coincidence — that’s what I said in my proposal. We need to collect baseline data, which is what I aim to do in this first year. And then, of course (hint, hint) I should get funding to keep collecting data for years. We’ll be covered with spiders!
It’s awesome stuff, as this video explains.
Also recommended if you want to learn more: this book, Spider Silk: Evolution and 400 Million Years of Spinning, Waiting, Snagging, and Mating. There’s so much coolness in spider biology, I’m tempted to offer an elective in the subject…except that I think it might be too narrowly focused for our curriculum, and about half the students would refuse to go anywhere near it.
But I still think the homologies are misaligned. It’s a better version of what Spider-Man ought to have looked like.
Lots of body horror here, so maybe I should warn you all and tuck it below the fold.
Ooh, you can get it on a t-shirt or a mug or a whole bunch of things!
And she’s got one for arachnids!
Now if only there were a similar poster for all the spider families — there are 117 of them, last I looked. I tell you, the World Spider Catalog is not the place to start studying their taxonomy.
I’ve been naughty. I haven’t been keeping up with my intended schedule of one video per week. But finally I got something done.
There have been lots of distractions, but honestly? This is tough for me. There are days I don’t want to look at my face or hear my voice, and making these videos compels me to sit down and wrestle with my lack of charisma. I’ll keep plodding along, mainly as therapy — I do enjoy the process, it’s just that final step of subjecting it to the eyeballs of the world that is hard.
I think it’s the idea of living in your home for 16 years and never leaving it except for brief forays to leap out, kill, and eat passers-by.
I still have questions, though. What about sewage? How do they clean up the spider poop that accumulates? Also, they show a spiderling … are males more prone to wandering from home? How do they avoid getting eaten when they tap on the turret door?
First, the bad news. I now have no adult males, because Xena ate her consort, as I feared she would. I am beginning to suspect that she’s one of those radical feminist lesbian spiders who is going to kill every male she encounters. I don’t know if they successfully mated before the murder, and she hasn’t yet produced an egg case.
Also, one of my second generation spiders, a young female, abruptly died. Before she curled up and expired, though, she did produce an egg case, so maybe her line will live on.
The good news is that right now I am keeping an eye on three egg cases. The next few weeks will tell if can keep any spiderlings alive any more.
