Friday, October 29 2:43 pm
Goblin spider Australoonops granulatus from Africa. Credit AMNH
Goblin spiders lurk unseen in the world’s leaf litter. The natural world is often just as haunting as the macabre costumes worn on city streets, as highlighted by a study published this year by a curator emeritus in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History, Norman Platnick.
Over the past three years, Platnick and colleagues have named or redefined the taxonomy of hundreds of new species of goblin spiders—an often overlooked group named for their unusual appearance and secretive habits. Goblin spiders (members of the family Oonopidae) are extremely small: the largest is 3 millimeters in size, and most are under 2 millimeters.
“Goblins are probably the most poorly known group of spiders,” says Platnick. “Their small size has made them difficult to study, but scanning electron microscopy and recent advances in digital imaging are allowing us to examine their structures in much more detail than was previously possible.”
A Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History unravels the previous taxonomy of the genus Stenoonops, a group of spineless goblin spiders that have a soft abdomen and muddy-orange carapace. Fourteen of the 19 species moved to new genera (in fact, six different genera). But because 17 new species from the Caribbean were described as Stenoonops, the genus increased in numbers and now has 23 species. Two other genera are given new species as well: Longoonops and Australoonops gain five species combined.
“It isn’t surprising that there are so many undescribed goblin spiders,” says Platnick. “When we began the global inventory of the Oonopidae, there were only about 500 species known, a number we thought represented about 20 percent of the actual biodiversity in this group. There are a lot of species that have small ranges—the perfect group for giving us hints about the biogeographic histories of the areas they occupy, as well as for conservation, by showing us what areas are most in need of protection against habitat destruction.”
In addition to Platnick, Nadine Dupérré is an author of this paper. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the American Museum of Natural History.
Friday, September 03 8:57 am
Spider Silk. Credit: AMNH\R. Mickens
Time is running out to view what took four years, some 80 people, and over one million golden orb spiders from Madagascar to create: an 11-by-4 foot, naturally golden-hued textile on display in the Museum through October 3.
For more than 100 years, people have tried to extract silk from spiders, but the spectacular, rare fabric showcased in the Museum Grand Gallery is the only surviving textile made out of the silk of these hairy, eight-legged creatures.
“I was blown away by its wonderful, lustrous, golden color,” says Museum Curator Ian Tattersall. “Only one other spider silk textile was ever exhibited, in Paris around 1900, and that has subsequently been lost, so this is unique in the world” (To hear more from Dr. Tattersall on the spider silk exhibit, go here).
Golden orb spiders—the largest of which can grow to the size of a human hand—produce golden-hued silk that is stronger than steel but is conveniently elastic and lightweight. Because of these rare properties, people have envisioned potential applications for spider silk in battle, surgery, and space exploration, among other fields. But unlike silkworms, which can be easily farmed to produce mass quantities of silk, golden orb spiders are cannibalistic in nature, making them difficult to hold in close quarters and to extract silk filament in big quantities.
Despite the obstacles, American fashion designer Nicholas Godley teamed up with art historian and textile expert Simon Peers to build a complex spider silk harvesting operation in Madagascar. The pair hired locals, who collected over 3,000 spiders per day by using long bamboo sticks to tear down the spiders’ golden-colored webs, which can span the length of a one-lane road. Read more »
Tuesday, May 11 9:43 am
New Zealand's Colaranea viriditas, an orb weaving spider drawn from a specimen by Museum scientific illustrator Nadine Duperre. Credit: Nadine Duperre
When you bring your mystery finds to the American Museum of Natural History this May 22 for Identification Day, you will also have a chance to celebrate the International Year of Biodiversity.
The Museum’s collections — a record of the diversity of life normally housed out of the public eye — will be featured together with talks by several scientists that explore how the loss of numerous species is affecting the group of animals that they study.
Louis Sorkin, a scientific assistant who has worked at the Museum for over 30 years, will speak about spiders and their relatives. Sorkin maintains a small colony of a few thousand bed bugs in four jars in his lab and has become a media expert on this group of animals.
What are the greatest conservation threats to spiders and the other arthropods?
The greatest threat to almost any organism on Earth is habitat destruction. Arthropods’ ecosystems must be maintained to ensure that all species, both plant and animal, flourish. In most cases, the species are known only from a particular area and species are dependent upon one another for their combined existence.
For example, a few months ago I helped the New York Natural History Council identify a true bug species, Megamelus davisi, or the Water Lily Planthopper. This arthropod appears to be an important source of food for the Northern Cricket Frog (Acris crepitans) in its last known habitat in New York, the Glenmere reservoir.
Many people know about habitat destruction and how this affects ecosystems and the species that live in them. What are some other threats to biodiversity?
One of the less understood threats is the accidental introduction or importation of species. For example, accidental introductions of fire ants, white-footed ants, ghost ants, and Argentine ants displace native ant species. And when parasitic flies or wasps are imported for insect control, these animals can parasitize non-target species. Read more »
