The benefits of being social, from a spider's perspective
A new study has found that spiders that live in groups benefit from each other's company in unexpected ways.
Plants & Animals
May 20, 2020
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News tagged with spider
Wolf spiders may turn to cannibalism in a warming Arctic
Wolf spiders in a warming Arctic are getting bigger, reproducing more and eating different foods. Including other spiders.
Plants & Animals
May 05, 2020
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257
Following the insect meltdown, numbers of orb web spiders have drastically declined
The abundance of large orb web spiders in the Swiss midland has declined drastically over the last 40 years. The main reason for this is the shrinking food supply available to these insectivorous animals. This is demonstrated ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 23, 2020
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Spider combs tame unruly nanofibers
Cribellate spiders spin thousands of tiny nanofibers into sticky threads. To keep from getting caught in their own webs, these spiders use a nonstick comb on their back legs. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Nano ...
Nanomaterials
Apr 22, 2020
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Untangling the social lives of spiders
The idea of a complex spider society—in which thousands of spiders live, hunt, and raise their young together in a single colony—is unsettling to many of us. We are perhaps lucky then that this scene is relatively rare ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 31, 2020
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Orb-weaver spiders' yellow and black pattern helps them lure prey
Being inconspicuous might seem the best strategy for spiders to catch potential prey in their webs, but many orb-web spiders, which hunt in this way, are brightly coloured. New research finds their distinct yellow and black ...
Ecology
Feb 11, 2020
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SPIDER mission will assemble and manufacture a communications antenna in space
It has been suggested that if humanity truly wants to embark on a renewed era of space exploration, one of the key ingredients is the ability to manufacture structures in space. By assembling everything from satellites to ...
Space Exploration
Feb 05, 2020
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French mathematician and spider aficionado Cédric Villani honoured with a new orb-weaver
Despite being considered as one of the best studied spiders in the Palearctic, the orb-weaver spiders (family Araneidae) remain poorly known in the central parts of the ecozone. To bridge the knowledge gaps, an international ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 03, 2020
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Spider glue turns moths' defenses against them
If you've ever tried to stick tape to a dusty surface, you know the dilemma most spiders face when trying to catch moths. Moth wings are covered in tiny scales that slough off at a touch, allowing moths to escape dangers ...
Plants & Animals
Jan 29, 2020
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Cave fights for food: Voracious spiders vs. assassin bugs
Killing and eating of potential competitors, also known as intraguild predation, is a rare event that occurs only in specific situations such as severe scarcity of food resources, resulting in the competition between predators.
Plants & Animals
Jan 21, 2020
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