spiders

Spotted coin spider colors are a Swiss army knife of deception, bringing food closer, and keeping assailants at bay.

Over the course of their lives, the jumping spider Synemosyna formica wears two different ant disguises to fool preying birds.

A virtual exhibition of C.R. Percival’s slides reveals the natural world up close.

Without access to their mothers’ milk, Toxeus magnus offspring die within the first 10 days of life.

Scientists photograph a spider web in micron-scale glory.

In an unusual evolutionary twist, local stick spiders have come up with an almost identical repertoire of color morphs in multiple locations.

This discovery closes a 170-million-year gap in the fossil record.

Scientists explore why male peacock spiders are so colorful. 

Arachnids harbor a plentiful array of molecules that target mammalian pain receptors.

A cornucopia of toxins in the animal kingdom could provide inspiration for novel painkillers, but so far, effective drugs have proven elusive.
 

Prey stick to orb-weaver spider webs because their waxy outer layers mesh with spider silk to form a matrix glue.

Inspired by the Sorting Hat from the Harry Potter series, scientists aptly dubbed this pointy spider Eriovixia gryffindori, after the fictional yet formidable wizard Godric Gryffindor.   

Trap-jaw spiders have the fastest, most powerful bite of any arachnid, scientists show. 

A study of black widow spiders suggests that the arachnids leave traces of their own genetic material and DNA from prey in their sticky webs.

The predatory toxins employed by animals separated by millions of years of evolution are virtually identical, a study shows.

An international panel of scientists selects the 10 most interesting organisms discovered last year.

Specialized filters allow jumping spiders to see more colors than scientists previously thought.

Deciphering how a jumping spider sees the world and processes visual information may yield insights into long-standing robotics problems.

Cornell researchers probe the brains of jumping spiders to gain insight into the arachnid's visual processing capabilities.

Scientists engineer E. coli to produce artificial spider silk.