'Is this a brown recluse?' A year of looking at spiders

In 2017, a group of us decided to tackle the ever-present problem of spider misidentification by creating the Twitter account @RecluseOrNot. Focused mainly around the eponymous recluse spiders – particularly, but not limited ...

Black widow spiders dial up posture for survival and sex

A new study led by Western University's Natasha Mhatre shows that body dynamics and posture are crucial to how black widow spiders decode the important vibrations that travel through their webs and up their legs. Black widows ...

Molecular insights into spider silk

Spider silk is one of the toughest fibres in nature and has astounding properties. Scientists from the University of Würzburg discovered new molecular details of self-assembly of a spider silk fibre protein.

Newly discovered wasp turns social spiders into zombies

It sounds like the plot of the world's tiniest horror movie: deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon, a newly discovered species of wasp transforms a "social" spider into a zombie-like drone that abandons its colony to do the wasp's ...

Intense fires threaten conservation-significant trapdoor spider

A new Curtin University study has found trapdoor spiders do not survive intense bushfires but have high survival rates in low-intensity fires, in a finding that may have important implications for conservation management ...

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