A new spider genus discovered

Team Udayavani, May 23, 2018, 11:06 AM IST

Mangaluru: A new spider genus that jumps, raids nests of spiders of its own species and gobbles up their eggs has been discovered by a team of three researchers, including one from Dakshina Kannada. The spider was previously spotted in only parts of South and South-East Asia.

The spider was first pgotographed by Indranil Banerjee, a wildlife photographer based in West Bengal. He came across the spider at banana plantations at a fruit orchard in West Bengal in early 2017. On seeing the photograph the  researchers – principal author and lead researcher, arachnologist Javed Ahmed; naturalist, birder and landrace dog aficionado Rajashree Khalap and environmentalist and surgeon Dr Krishna Mohan, swung into action.

“They are so tiny and that’s how several researchers missed studying them,” informed Dr. Krishna Mohan, a naturalist and surgeon based in Moodabidri. Due to the spider’s small size and dull colour, these spiders had been largely overlooked in their natural environment,informed the researchers. They received little study in terms of their natural history, behaviour and distribution.

’Peckhamia’, a globally renowned, peer-acclaimed scientific journal dedicated to the study of jumping spiders has published this discovery. The study was collaborated with Dr. David E. Hill, a world authority on jumping spiders and Dr. Richard J. Pearce, a leading British spider expert.

Neobrettus belongs to sub-tribe Spartaeina, a group of unique jumping spiders. Ahmed, Khalap and Mohan had earlier discovered two spiders, Portia albimanus and Brettus cingulatus,from the same sub-tribe.

The team is now working on finding out whether the newly discovered spider belongs to a whole new species.

“We study their eyes to go to their family level. Every spider has a variable eye pattern. The arrangement of these patterns is similar in a family. That’s how we concluded that this spider belongs to the Neobrettus species,” explained Mohan.

“The next step is to get the specimen after which we dissect their genitalia, compare it with species recorded and explained. If no match is found, these spiders will be deemed a new species and the naming process follows,” he added.

“India’s species richness, coupled with a lack of appropriate research on several groups of invertebrates in the region, means there are several species of spiders waiting to be discovered or rediscovered. That’s just what our team is doing, discovering Indian spiders one species at a time,” wrote Ahmed.