New Giant orb web spider discovered

More than 41,000 spider species are known with about 400–500 added each year. Another rare species of 'giant' orb web spider has been discovered in Africa and Madagascar. In the journal Plos One, researchers describe Nephila komaci as the largest web spinning spider, making the largest orb webs known to science.

Only the females of this groups of species are giants, with a leg span of up to 12cm; the male spiders are smaller by comparison, but still large.

Scientists say the female spiders are capable of spinning webs that reach up to 1m in diameter. Orb-weaving spiders are a widespread group which take their name from the round webs they typically spin.

The new spider was identified by Matjaz Kuntner, a biologist from the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and his colleague Jonathan Coddington, from the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC.

The giant female was in a collection belonging to the Plant Protection Research Institute in Pretoria, South Africa.

"It did not match any described species," said Dr Kuntner.

In his search through more than 2,500 samples from 37 museums, no further specimens turned up and he assumed the spider must be extinct.

But when a colleague in South Africa found three more of the spiders, it became apparent that they belonged to this same new species.

The discovery will enable scientists to study the evolution of the dramatic size difference between male and female Nephila spiders.

Dr Kuntner explained that the widely accepted theory was that evolutionary pressure was causing female "gigantism", with the females increasing in size in order to produce larger numbers of offspring.

He and his colleague, Jonathan Coddington, from the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, fear the rare spider might be endangered.

Dr Kuntner named the species in honour of his best friend and fellow scientist Andrej Komac, who recently died in an accident.

Via - BBC News

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