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Argyrodine kleptoparasites differentiate amongst architecturally different host webs Kleptoparasitism is the theft of resources from another organism. This is a widespread foraging strategy amongst animals. Many Argyrodinae cobweb spiders (Theridiidae) are obligatory kleptoparasites that have abandoned web building, relying instead on webs of larger hosts (kleptotany). Theory predicts that kleptoparasites are not randomly distributed amongst host webs and prior studies indica

Our research team has discovered and described a completely new spider genus and species from Madagascar’s Marojejy National Park: Osmooka aphana . This spider is exceptionally rare, only eight adult specimens  are known worldwide. The first clue came from museum collections in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., where male and female specimens were found decades after they were collected. To learn more, the team from NIB and ZRC SAZU carried out two expeditions to northern M

Spider silks are protein fibers, renowned for their remarkable intrinsic mechanical properties. Dragline or major ampullate (MA) silk is particularly noteworthy for its combination of high tensile strength and extensibility, resulting in exceptional toughness, i.e., the amount of the absorbed energy before breaking, outperforming most biological and synthetic materials. While other spider silks, from fibers to adhesives, also exhibit intriguing mechanical properties, research

Many spider species show large differences in size between males and females, but biologists still do not fully understand how or why...

Sexual cannibalism — the consumption of one mating partner by the other before, during, or after copulation — is documented across...

Animal personalities - consistent behavioral tendencies - can play an important role in mating decisions. This study tests the idea that...

The objective of our project is to provide a robust scientific framework for testing organismal spread and invasion. Our model organisms...