Science Friday - Protecting The ‘Satan’ Tarantula | If Termites Wore Stripes, Would Spiders Still Eat Them?

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

A team of scientists in Ecuador is on a mission to describe new-to-science tarantula species to help secure conservation protections. And, undergraduate researchers pasted striped capes onto termites��� backs to see if a well-known warning sign would fend off predators.Protecting The ‘Satan’ Tarantula and Other Lovable Giant SpidersA team of scientists in Ecuador is on a mission to find and describe species of an understudied, often unpopular group of critters: mygalomorphs, a group of large, stocky spiders that includes tarantulas. In late 2023, two of these researchers published a paper in the journal ZooKeys describing two new-to-science tarantula species, including one named Psalmopoeus satanas—affectionately called the “Satan tarantula” because of its erratic behavior.Tarantulas are understudied in Ecuador, and there are many species left to describe. They’re also threatened by mining, agriculture, and the illegal pet trade. That’s what led Pedro Peñaherrera-R., a researcher at Universidad San Francisco de Quito to found the Mygalomorphae Research Group. Its members are working to describe these spiders and secure conservation protections before they possibly disappear.Producer Rasha Aridi talks with Peñaherrera-R. and his co-author and fellow group member Roberto José León about how the Satan tarantula earned its name, how they discover and classify spiders, and why we should all show spiders a little more love.If Termites Wore Stripes, Would Spiders Still Eat Them?The animal kingdom is filled with colors and patterns. Sometimes, those colors are to signal to members of an animal’s own species, in a mating display for instance. In other cases, a bright color or vibrant pattern serves as a warning to potential predators—a signal saying “don’t eat me, I’m toxic.” That type of warning coloration, known as aposematism, can be seen in the bright colors of a poison dart frog, or the black, white, and yellow stripes of a monarch butterfly caterpillar.Bigger animals, like birds, are known to consider that sort of warning signal when hunting. Researchers at the University of Florida were interested in whether jumping spiders might also take that sort of striped warning coloration into account when choosing their prey. To find out, they applied tiny striped capes to the backs of laboratory termites to study whether those stripes affected the behavior of hungry jumping spiders. They found that while the test spiders did notice the striped termites more than termites wearing solid colors, the spiders were less likely to attack striped termites when given the chance to do so.Behavioral ecologist Dr. Lisa Taylor joins Ira to discuss the purpose of the project—and former lead undergraduate researcher Lauren Gawel describes the challenges of trying to get termites to dress up as superheroes.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Why would you want to put a tiny striped cape on a termite? There are our reasons. Besides the fact that it's absolutely adorable. I'm sci-fri producer Charles Burgquist. It's Tuesday, February 6th, and indeed, it's still Science Friday. Coming up, we'll talk with researchers trying to decode the role of various colors and patterns as signals in the animal world, including how a tiny striped cape can affect the behavior of jumping spiders. But first, we go into the forests of Ecuador to meet a newly-disclosed.

discovered tarantula. Here's Ira with SciFri producer Rasha Aredi. Hi, Russia. Hey, Ira. Yeah, so this critter is small. It's pretty fuzzy and it's kind of shy. Hmm. Are we playing 20 questions here? Yes, actually. How about a hint? It has really cute eyes, eight of them, in fact. Cute eyes, that magic number eight, it's fuzzy. So I'm guessing it's not not an octopus. It's not an octopus for once, actually. I'm talking about tarantulas, everybody's favorite critter or so I would like to believe. Especially if you're James Bond, but that's another story. Rasha, take it away.

Spider scientists in Quito, Ecuador are on a mission to find and describe new species of tarantulas that live all over Ecuador. In a recent study, they described two species that are brand new to science, including one that's affectionately named the Satan's spider. I spoke with the authors of the spidery study, researchers at the Miglomorphy Research Group at the University of San Francisco in Quito Ecuador. Pedro Penaerera is the founder of the group, and Roberto Jose Leon is a biology student and group member. Roberto and Pedro, welcome to Science Friday. Thank you for having us. Thanks. So, Roberto, I'm really intrigued by this Satan spider that you recently described. How did it even get its name?

All right, so the spider was originally in this like bamboo fence thing. And we started digging, like chopping out pieces of bamboo so that we can get the spider. And instead of just crawling out and running away, like most spiders would do, the spider just decided it would fling itself onto whatever was there. And spiders have really poor vision. So it definitely had no idea where it was jumping to. But it jumped directly at one of my friends' chest. And it was quite funny.

That's amazing. So after you caught this tarantula, you brought it back to the lab. How do you go about classifying it? There's basically three different ways that you can classify a new species. You can either have morphological characteristics, which are basically the features of its body and how its body functions, its physiology and all these different aspects. You have the genetic aspects based on the amount of mutations and differences to other spiders in certain genes, you could classify as different species as belonging to different lineages. Then there is basically the ecological aspect of this where you can differentiate two species by several different ecological characteristics.

One of the main would be basically arboreal spiders have hairier feet because they use these feet, these little hair-like structures to stick onto things. arboreal spiders not only have this different ecological, like niche they have to fill in, and they also have these structures that follow this niche. And we use all three of those things to determine if that spider is or isn't a new species. So this very special satan spider that you found, what characteristics did it have that was special? When we use these morphological characteristics, we tend to use the lock and key hypothesis. You can basically infer whether something is or isn't a new species if you have the male and female of that species. And you can tell because of

the characteristics of the reproductive organs. It basically states that the male reproductive organ is kind of like tailored for the female reproductive organ of that species. So you wouldn't have two different species that have exactly the same reproductive morphology. It's one of the things that we use in our paper. That's so cool. Yeah, it's cool. So can you tell me, I mean, why do you bother looking for tarantulas in the first place? What do you want to know about them? Okay, so first we want to see the diversity of tarantulas. With this, we can get more elaborated studies, for example, evolutionary studies,

that we can relate geographical processes, for example, the creation of the Andes, other concerns about conservation. And for example, it could be great if we, in the future, we can see a reserve, a natural reserve that could be created based on the protection of a tarantula or any spider or even any insect. The main reason to look for tarantulas in our case is to start like the base knowledge and led to future generations or future studies that we could make possible?

This base knowledge is basically because in most places, let's say, for example, in the United States, there's a lot of research already, like recording what species are where. I think it is quite more rare to have a new species in the U.S. than it is in countries like Ecuador or Colombia or Peru. We started doing this because we had no idea what was even here. We knew that there was tarantulas, but no one knew what they were. And if you don't know what there is in an ecosystem, you're going to struggle trying to conserve it.

So basically, our research is aimed to understanding and actually classifying this diversity that we know is there, but that no one has ever done before. Can you tell me a little bit about some of the threats to tarantulas? Is there anything that you're concerned about? Major threats that we saw in our field of work was mining and also agricultural activities. Basically, here in Ecuador, mining is present in most of the Cordilleras and also the creeks that comes from the Andes. So everything that could pollutes like water sources up from the Andes could be affected by the mining activity that is in the Andes. So affect the populations of Tarantulas. In the other way, the agricultural activity, change everything in the land.

So there's a high possibility that the tarantulas could be specific to micro-ecosystems. So there are these micro-habitats with specific conditions that could be destroyed. Another threat that was about pet trade. So Ecuador have a large history about illegal pet trade, so poachers, that comes from other places of the world to get a specific animal that looks very, very nice, and they want to keep them in their private collections. But they don't care about the stability of the ecosystems

or the stability of the population of the tarantula. As long as there's a demand for these spiders, there will always be these poachers that, basically, they see this new publication of what a shiny blue tarantula I'm going to go get it in Ecuador. and make a lot of money. That's one of the biggest issues that we haven't really seen, but we know happen because we've been in many places in Ecuador, but I don't think we've ever seen a tarantula poacher. Despite that, it's one of the biggest threats and it's one of the

hardest to regulate for the same reason. Lots of people hate tarantulas or are really, really scared of them. What do you want them to know? What would you say to them? In reality, despite some of them having names like Satanaz and the Satan spider, I would love to reiterate that this spider had an amazing personality. This spider really was quite charismatic. It was quite nice to be around. And we named the species after him because we grew really fond of him. And there's more to them than most people would think. Most spiders can have quite distinguished personalities, even in the same species, and it's quite like human personalities. Let's say there's this other spider we named it, Gladys.

And Gladys basically doesn't really care about anything. You could be poking it. It would not care. It would not move. It's there as long as it isn't food. It is completely and absolutely indifferent to it. And I think I have quite a few friends that don't really care. Well, thank you both so much for being here and sharing your spider stories with us.

I'm happy we could be part of this. Thank you very much. Thanks. Pedro Penaerrera and Roberto Jose Leon are researchers at the Miglomorphi Research Group at the University of San Francisco in Quito, Ecuador. If you want to check out photos of these beautiful tarantulas, go to Science Friday.com slash spider. I'm Rasha Aridi. What a cool story. Thank you, Raja. Our next story is about putting tiny capes on the back of turrets. Now, I know this sounds a bit crazy, but stay with me on this, okay? Scientists are trying to decode the importance of signals like colors and patterns in the animal kingdom.

So let's say you're a spider, a fuzzy jumping spider looking for a meal. Which succulent termite, let's say, looks the tastiest. Researchers at the University of Florida turned to applying tiny striped capes to the backs of termites to study how those stripes affected the behavior. of hungry jumping spiders. That's the premise. Here's the explanation presented by Dr. Lisa Taylor, behavioral ecologist in the entomology and nematology department, University of Florida in Gainesville, and Dr. Lauren Govel, the lead undergraduate researcher on this project, who is now a veterinary intern in the Tufts-Cumbing School of Veterinary Medicine. Welcome both of you to Science Friday.

Thanks for having us. Thanks. I'm really excited. Nice to have you. Okay, Lauren, why put a cape on a termite? Besides the fact that it's absolutely adorable, in order to do this study, we were looking at if these jumping spiders would have the same reactions to what we call aposomatic patterns in the wild or apisomatic displays. So by aposomatic, you mean it's a warning symbol to predatory. tourists. Exactly. Something like the color red is one that we think of a lot in the wild where an animal will see the color red and think danger. I should not eat that. I should go turn the other way. Black and white is another one of those things. So if you think of a skunk, you definitely don't want to mess with one of those. And those colorations are kind of a big glaring way to get your attention and make sure that you know that right off the bat. So we wanted to test that sort of dispens. play in spiders. Their best prey that we can give them in the lab is termites, which don't necessarily have any of these colorations naturally. And so in order to provide different colorations in a controlled setting, what's been done in the past and what we did for our study is to put little

paper patterned capes onto them. Dr. Taylor, you study colors as communication and signals and spiders and other species. What is this telling you? Yeah, so we can learn a lot from these experiments, because if you just kind of go out in the natural world, you see all these colors and patterns. And for me, anyway, it just makes me wonder, like, what is this all about? What are all these colors and patterns doing? And we've learned a lot from these types of experiments with birds, for example, where a lot of things we've learned so far suggest that there are certain colors and patterns that are just really good at warning of toxicity, like red and black and white stripes. these things kind of jump out to predators are really obvious. And so predators either have

innate aversions to these colors and patterns or they can easily remember these colors and patterns. So if they attack something that's red or black and white stripe and it tastes bad, those colors and patterns are really memorable. And so I've just always been really interested in trying to understand why animals have all these colors and patterns and why they work, why some work better than others, and what predators are directed towards. So we know that a lot of them are effective with birds, but we know a lot less about other predators that are really common out there, like these tiny jumping spiders. Very interesting.

Now, Lauren, I have to ask you, how do you put a cape on a termite and don't tell me very difficultly? How's very carefully then? So the actual process, there's a little bit of trial and error, not going to lie. Some termines were sacrificed for the greater good of me figuring out the best way to do this. But literally I just took the smallest drop of Elmer's glue possible and put it on this little paper cape and figured out the best amount of force to lay it on top of the termites back for it to stick and not squish the poor little termite and not overwhelm it completely with too much glue. I eventually figured out the right ratio for the glue and the amount of force and placed many, many, many of those capes. Dr. Taylor, can you give me some examples of insects that have these warning stripes when they're not wearing tiny glute on capes?

Yeah, yes, these are really common in nature. So stripes in particular, some of the most common things you might think of are like monarch caterpillars. So they're black and white stripes. and they also have a little bit of yellow. There's a lot of caterpillars that have black and white stripes. A lot of butterflies and moths have black and white striping on them that's pretty obvious to predators. And those are relatively large insects. So those are probably trying to communicate with larger animals like birds.

So what I think is really interesting is there's a lot of really, really tiny insects that have black and white stripes. Like the tiniest little baby monarch caterpillars are a good example. But then also there's like these little tree hoppers that are black and white stripes. There's some little plant hoppers of black and white stripes, and there's even this really cool insect called the Harlequin bug that lays these really tiny black and white striped eggs that are thought to be chemically defended. And so all those things we think are warning that they're toxic, but they're really tiny. So they're probably not warning birds. They're probably warning something smaller, like jumping spiders. Wow.

Okay. So Lauren, drumroll, please. What happened? Did the stripes make the termites unattractive to the spiders? Yeah. So ultimately, the stripes are bold and brash and. attention getting. So in the first part of our study, we did find that the spiders oriented to or kind of faced and looked at the termites with the black and white striped capes first. And then when

they were allowed into the same area as the termites, despite the fact that they had oriented to those striped caped termites first, they often decided not to attack those and to attack one of the solid colored caped termites instead. Dr. Taylor, what would you need to take this further if you had a blank check, which of course I have for you. What would you do? Well, we're really excited that you have a blank check for us. That sounds great.

It's in the mail. One thing that I think would be really fun would be for the blank check would be to create the equivalent of really tiny gopros to put on these spiders and GPS trackers. is we can do all these really interesting experiments in the lab and kind of understand how they make decisions in these different contexts that we put them in. But I would really love to just be able to see more like what their world is like in the field. We catch these spiders in the field and we've tracked them. We can kind of track them pretty easily. But, you know, they'll dart under the leaf litter and hide from us occasionally. So I'd really like to know where they go, how many other

spiders they encounter, what the possible prey items are that they encounter, where they sleep, and just kind of what the day and the life of the jumping spider is. All good questions, and I want to thank both of you. We've run out of time, Dr. Lisa Taylor, behavioral ecologist in the entomology and nematology department that's at the University of Florida. And Lauren Govel, she was the lead undergraduate researcher on the project, but is now a veterinary intern in the Tufts Coming School of Veterinary Medicine. Thank you both for taking time to be with us today.

Thanks for having us. It was fun. Thank you so much. This was great. That's all the time we have for today. Tomorrow, a CRISPR gene editing technique has been approved for treating sickle cell disease. But what diseases and conditions might come next? I'm SciFri producer Charles Bergwist.

Thanks for listening. We'll see you soon.