Largest Web Spinning Spider Found

[Syt]

Channeling Malthus.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091021-largest-web-spinning-spider.html

Meet the newest odd couple of the animal kingdom: the giant female and tiny male of the largest web-spinning spider known to science: Nephila komaci.

The female of the species has a leg span of up to 5 inches (12 centimeters), while the male—which spends much of its time clambering on its partner's back—barely reaches half inch (1.27 centimeters), a new study says.

Part of a well-known group of golden orb-weaver spiders—which can spin webs up to three feet (one meter) wide—N. komaci was first identified in a South African museum collection in 2000.

But it wasn't until a 2004 field survey, which discovered three individuals in South Africa's Tembe Elephant Park, that scientists knew the spider still existed in the wild.

The newfound spider, detailed October 20 in the journal PLoS One, is the first addition to the Nephila genus since 1879.

Largest Web-Spinner a Rarity

N. komaci is likely rare within its small habitats in South Africa and Madagascar, researchers say, and females are much less common than males.

Much is still unknown about the species' biology, but study co-author and spider expert Jonathan Coddington suspects the female evolved her extreme size to thwart smaller predators.

(Watch a video of the world's largest spider.)

In addition, the males are "sort of fanatically monogamous" during their roughly one-year life spans, said Coddington, a senior scientist at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

When ready to mate, a male will usually make his move when the female is molting, he added.

"Her legs are soft and her body's soft, and she can't prevent being inseminated by the male," Coddington said. "Once he's inseminated her, he'll break off his genitalia in hers, thereby plugging her up."

The male, which is left sterile, then slowly dies.

This strategy should stymie other males' mating attempts—though some females have been found with several dismembered male organs lodged inside them, he said.

Overall, Coddington added, the discovery of this new species is "just further evidence that it's a wonderful world."

The web is ca. 1 m/3 ft in diameter.

[Caliga]

Cool.  I've got a pair of female corn spiders living outside my house (one has staked out the north side, and the other the south side) and they are HUGE.  I mean, so large you can easily see the one on the north side like 50 feet away from my driveway.

[Malthus]

Cool! 

Though this in unpleasantly wierd:

When ready to mate, a male will usually make his move when the female is molting, he added.

"Her legs are soft and her body's soft, and she can't prevent being inseminated by the male," Coddington said. "Once he's inseminated her, he'll break off his genitalia in hers, thereby plugging her up."

The male, which is left sterile, then slowly dies.

[Syt]

Cool! 

Though this in unpleasantly wierd:

When ready to mate, a male will usually make his move when the female is molting, he added.

"Her legs are soft and her body's soft, and she can't prevent being inseminated by the male," Coddington said. "Once he's inseminated her, he'll break off his genitalia in hers, thereby plugging her up."

The male, which is left sterile, then slowly dies.

As explained by Isabella Rosselini in her Green Porn series:
http://www.sundancechannel.com/greenporno/
(Season 1)

[garbon]

[lustindarkness]

Cool! 

Though this in unpleasantly wierd:

When ready to mate, a male will usually make his move when the female is molting, he added.

"Her legs are soft and her body's soft, and she can't prevent being inseminated by the male," Coddington said. "Once he's inseminated her, he'll break off his genitalia in hers, thereby plugging her up."

The male, which is left sterile, then slowly dies.

But it is followed by:

This strategy should stymie other males' mating attempts—though some females have been found with several dismembered male organs lodged inside them, he said.

[Malthus]

But it is followed by:

This strategy should stymie other males' mating attempts—though some females have been found with several dismembered male organs lodged inside them, he said.

Spider gangbangs? 

[The Brain]

 

[Ideologue]

Normal case of sperm competition.  It's a fascinating field of study, and a relatively new one.

[The Brain]

Oh FFS

[Malthus]

Normal case of sperm competition.  It's a fascinating field of study, and a relatively new one.

Some mammals anoint the faces and hair of their mates with sperm, allegedly as a warning to other males.  Fascinating behaviour.

[Caliga]

 

[Syt]

Normal case of sperm competition.  It's a fascinating field of study, and a relatively new one.

Some mammals anoint the faces and hair of their mates with sperm, allegedly as a warning to other males.  Fascinating behaviour.

How does bukkake factor into that?

[Malthus]

How does bukkake factor into that?

A warning to other tribes. 

[Ideologue]

Normal case of sperm competition.  It's a fascinating field of study, and a relatively new one.

Some mammals anoint the faces and hair of their mates with sperm, allegedly as a warning to other males.  Fascinating behaviour.

Reproductive biology is my new Hellenistic history.

The other day in my Con Law class we were discussing Griswold v. Connecticut or somesuch USSC case about the bundle of rights involved in human fucking, and our prof asked "Where does conception usually take place?" and I said "fallopian tubes."  While technically accurate, the answer she was looking for was "the private sphere."