Book review: Explore Spiders of India: A Pocket Guide by Karthikeyan S.

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Book review: Explore Spiders of India: A Pocket Guide by Karthikeyan S.
Published by EcoEdu. 200 pages, Pocket Size, Full colour, Paperback: ₹400.00.

Spiders have always captured popular imagination as depicted by the famous Spiderman or as a terrifying monster like Aragog from Harry Potter. But leaving aside this perception, spiders play a crucial role in ecosystems they inhabit. Spiders are arachnids and belong to the same class as scorpions, ticks/mites, whip scorpions etc. Spiders are predators and occur in … Read More

“Ganesha” Spider — a Unique New Spider that Masquerades as a Leaf!

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An oft-used survival strategy in nature is to mimic something you’re not, either to ambush unsuspecting prey or to convince predators that you’re not tasty!

On a warm summer night in April 2015, we headed out on a night trail in the evergreen forests of Agumbe, Karnataka. We were quite happy to see a few snakes, scorpions and frogs. We were still on the trail when I noticed something unusual. Initially I dismissed it as a fallen dried leaf. But … Read More

Discovery Of India’s First Ever Tigidia Trapdoor Spiders From Western Ghats

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Three species of trapdoor spiders belonging to the Genus Tigidia have been discovered in the Western Ghats. The type specimens are from the Nilgiri and Coimbatore districts in Tamil Nadu and Uttara Kannada district in Karnataka. This is the first time that Tigidia spiders have been recorded in India.

Tigidia rutilofronis, T. nilgiriensis and T. sahyadri are the three species discovered by a team of five student scientists including Manju Siliwal, Neha Gupta, Rajesh V. Sanap, Zeeshan A. Mirza and … Read More