An understanding of how the degree of phylogenetic relatedness influences the ecological similarity among species is crucial to inferring the mechanisms governing the assembly of communities. We evaluated the relative importance of spider phylogenetic relationships and ecological niche (plant morphological variables) to the variation in spider body size and shape by comparing spiders at differe...

Although known for their potent venom and ability to prey upon both invertebrate and vertebrate species, the Barychelidae spider family has been entirely neglected by toxinologists. In striking contrast, the sister family Theraphosidae (commonly known as tarantulas), which last shared a most recent common ancestor with Barychelidae over 200 million years ago, has received much attention, accoun...

The outstanding combination of high tensile strength and extensibility of spider silk is believed to contribute to the material's toughness. Thus, there is great interest in engineering silk for biomedical products such as suture or implants. Additionally, over the years, many studies have also sought to enhance the mechanical properties of spider silk for wider applicability, e.g., by irradiat...

Spider silk fibres share unprecedented structural and mechanical properties which span from the macroscale to nanoscale and beyond. This is possible due to the molecular features of modular proteins termed spidroins. Thus, the investigation of the organizational scaffolds observed for spidroins in spider silk fibres is of paramount importance for reverse bioengineering. This dataset consists in...

Algorithms inspired by intelligent behavior of simple agents are very popular now a day among researchers. A comparatively young algorithm motivated by extraordinary behavior of Spider Monkeys is Spider Monkey Optimization (SMO) algorithm. SMO algorithm is very successful algorithm to get to the bottom of optimization problems. This work presents a self-adaptive Spider Monkey optimization (SaSM...

In the present study we investigated long-term memory for unpleasant, neutral and spider pictures in 15 spider-fearful and 15 non-fearful control individuals using behavioral and electrophysiological measures. During the initial (incidental) encoding, pictures were passively viewed in three separate blocks and were subsequently rated for valence and arousal. A recognition memory task was perfor...

Spiders have evolved highly selective toxins for insects. There are many insecticidal neurotoxins in spider venoms. Although a large amount of work has been done to focus on neurotoxicity of spider components, little information, which is related with effects of spider toxins on tumor cell proliferation and cytotoxicity, is available for Brachypelma albopilosum venom. In this work, a novel spid...

This study investigates the interpretative bias in spider phobia with respect to rapid visuomotor processing. We compared perception, evaluation, and visuomotor processing of ambiguous schematic stimuli between spider-fearful and control participants. Stimuli were produced by gradually morphing schematic flowers into spiders. Participants rated these stimuli related to their perceptual appearan...

15 Noninvasive genetic approaches enable biomonitoring without the need to directly observe or 16 disturb target organisms. Environmental DNA (eDNA) methods have recently extended this 17 approach by assaying genetic material within bulk environmental samples without a priori 18 knowledge about the presence of target biological material. This paper describes a novel and 19 promising source of n...

A laboratory trial evaluated four phytoseiid species for their potential as biological control agents of spruce spider mite, Oligonychus ununguis (Jacobi) (Acari: Tetranychidae). An augmentative biological control approach, using the predatory mites Neoseiulus fallacis Garman and Galendromus occidentalis Nesbitt (Acari: Phytoseiidae), was evaluated for reducing pest mite densities and injury, a...