Posts Tagged: University of Idaho
Tarantulas to Grab the Spotlight at UC Davis Seminar on April 21
What do tarantulas and Johnny Cash have in common? They share a name, for one thing. When evolutonary biologist-taxonomist Chris Hamilton, a former doctoral student at Auburn University, Alabama, and now on the University of Idaho faculty, led a research team near the site of California's...
This tarantula is a male Aphonopelma johnnycashi. (Wikipedia image: credit,Chris A. Hamilton, Brent E. Hendrixson, Jason E. Bond - “Taxonomic revision of the tarantula genus Aphonopelma Pocock, 1901 (Araneae, Mygalomorphae, Theraphosidae) within the United States”, in ZooKeys, volume 560, 2016.
Golden Orbweavers Ignore Biological Rules
Size does matter. Have you ever wondered about sexual size dimorphism in the tropical spiders, the golden orbweavers? The females are sometimes 10 times larger and 100 times heavier than their male counterparts. And the webs that the females weave are huge--they can be as wide as five feet...
A female Trichonephila clavipes (formerly Nephila clavipes) is a giant compared to her small male (below). The research covers a complex pattern of sexual size dimorphism in this group of spiders, family Nephilidae. (Image copyright by Chris Hamilton, University of Idaho)