Li Shizhen long head spider, Jiang Wenyun spot spider... Why give a new species of spider such a "loud" name? What does spider taxonomy do? Watch "Spider-Man" Forestry Jay tell his scientific story.
At present, a total of 55 new spider species have been published, and on April 28 this year, four new spider species were announced in one go: Eresus lishizheni, Episinus bonjovi, E. jiangweni and Meotipa luoqiae. Among them, Li Shizhen Longtou Spider is the first new species of Longtou Spider discovered by Chinese.
▲ Li Shizhen longhead spider (partially reddened due to alcohol) and Li Shizhen (pictured on the right from primary school textbooks)
▲ Bang Qiao Fei Cloud Spider and Bang Qiao Fei Band (right picture from the official website of Bang Qiao Fei Band)
▲ Jiang Wenyun spider and Jiang Wen (the right picture is provided by Jiang Wen)
▲ Luo Qi Meidi spider (right picture from Luo Qi's personal Weibo)
(Image source above: Red Star News)
All four new species have been published in the journal Zoological Systematics. The way Forestry Jie named the new species after his naturalist predecessors and favorite directors and rock stars is in the hope of attracting more people's attention to spiders and protecting the diversity of organisms.
▲ "Spider-Man" Forestry Jay
Many people are relatively unfamiliar with spiders, and they are even more unfamiliar with the discipline of studying spiders, spider taxonomy. The so-called spider taxonomy is mainly to discover new species and sort out the work of problem species published by predecessors.
When it comes to the spiders I studied, your impression of spiders may only stay in the "eight legs", "the body is divided into two parts", "poisonous", these keywords that accurately summarize spiders. To the layman, the work of classifying spiders may be novel and interesting, but for me, studying spider classification is actually a dangerous and extremely patient job.
▲ A new species published in the biology journal ZooKeys in 2019, the pilot plate crab spider, was collected at the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The pilot crab spider is a very beautiful spider, the female spider is the size of two fingernail caps, the body length is about 13 mm, the color is bright, and there are spots on the back; The male spider is small and has red and pink markings on its back
Let's start with the most important fieldwork. Mr. Zheng Leyi, a giant of entomology in China, once said: "Taxonomists must collect it themselves." Many laypeople often find that field trips sound interesting, but they are actually full of dangers. In my case, I myself have personally encountered critical situations such as mudslides, bears, wolves, and robberies.
Once, I was looking for a rare spider unique to China in Tibet, and because the habits of spiders were mostly diurnal and nocturnal, I had to wait until night before going up the mountain to collect it. Just as I was about to go back after painstakingly collecting the target species, I suddenly looked up and saw a black, cow-like creature drilling into the woods. I looked closer twice, only to see that its face was round and had no horns at all.
At that time, my head buzzed, and my heart screamed badly: It's over, I've met a bear. My first instinct was to immediately increase the throttle of the motorcycle, rush all the way down the mountain, and when I reached a safe place, I found that my clothes were soaked with cold sweat.
Just in May of this year, I also encountered an earthquake. In the days of the 6.4 magnitude earthquake in Dali, I was collecting specimens at the epicenter. I was driving during the earthquake, and when I felt the car start to shake, I asked my teammates, "Are you shaking your legs?" "They all said no, and that's when I reacted: an earthquake. Fortunately, due to flight cancellations, the trip was delayed by half an hour, and I was lucky enough to miss another danger: otherwise, I would have been the one who was buried in the landslide on the highway.
At present, Taiwan and Xinjiang have not been to all parts of the country, and I hope to have the opportunity to see the local spiders in the future.
After a difficult and dangerous field trip, this is not the end. What is more difficult is the follow-up paper, how to turn a new species soaked in a herbarium into a species that has been circulating in the paper for a hundred years under the operation of the scientific profession? In the eyes of every professional who studies spiders, each part of the spider can be subdivided: from the length of the entire spider to the location of a hair on the spider's foot, it is all data to be written in the paper.
The earliest spider taxonomy document was the Swedish Spider by the Swedish arachnologist (who studied spiders and other arachnids) in 1757, which predates the "pioneering classic" of taxonomy, Linnaeus' Natural Systems. After more than 200 years of development, spider taxonomy has also become increasingly cumbersome, which can manifest itself in time-consuming measurements, frustrating counting, and delicate anatomy that requires a lot of practice.
For the classification of animals in other taxa, it is basically enough to measure only body length, weight, head length, etc. Invertebrates, such as insects, measure the length and width of the thorax and abdomen, the length of the wings, and the length of the antennae. To identify spiders, the measurement data required are several times greater: body length, cephalothorax length and width, abdomen length and width, number of radial grooves, anterior middle eye diameter, anterior middle eye diameter, posterior middle eye diameter, posterior middle eye diameter, anterior middle eye spacing, anterior middle eye spacing, posterior middle eye spacing, posterior middle eye spacing, posterior median eye spacing, anterior and posterior lateral eye spacing and other 29 data. In addition, both male and female have to be measured, which is a total of 58 data.
Counting, then generally, is a thorn in the exponential step foot. Spiders have many spines on their legs, which can assist in controlling prey like needle cages. Arachnologists believe that in some taxa, the number of spines is also a taxonomic feature: a spider leg is divided into four faces, each face has several rows, each row has several thorns, need to be counted clearly. In addition to counting thorns, sometimes the number of warts in the lower lip and jaw lobes is also counted. There are usually hundreds of warts on the lower lip and jaw lobes that need to be counted slowly.
▲ Female Tegenaria domestica under a scanning electron microscope (Image source/Visual China)
Finally, there is dissection, except for a few particularly common species, the rest of the species of spiders want to accurately identify the species, must be dissected, by looking at their reproductive organs to determine the species.
The male spider's genitals grow on the tentacles, and the tentacles are directly removed during dissection. The anatomical identification of the female spider requires that the genitals inside the abdominal segment be picked off with a needle and then observed and identified. Female spiders have different structures and tubes on the ventral surface and back of the genitals. It is very easy to damage during dissection, and once damaged, the scientific value of the specimen will be greatly reduced.
Some people may find it strange when they see this, why do I always have a great interest in studying such a boring spider?
My interest in spiders actually began with insects. Relative to now, the distant 1995 children had nothing to play with, and when I was very young, my father took me up the mountain to observe insects. At that time, the observation method was relatively simple, that is, to use mineral water bottles to catch all the living and moving bugs and watch them crawl around. But I found that by the next day, these insects were dead, and only the spiders were still alive. That's when my interest in spiders came about. Later, when I went to elementary school, I also stepped into the 21st century with the Internet, learned about the Chinese insect lovers forum on the Internet, and was surprised that there were so many fans. In my interactions with them, I also developed more enthusiasm for studying spiders.
After going to junior high school, I bought all the spider monographs that were available on the market at that time, read books, and slowly observed the specimens to understand spiders against the text. The foundation of the study of spiders was also laid at this time. Later, when I went to college, my roommate and I bought a stereo microscope in a joint venture, and the world of spiders suddenly opened up in front of me. In the process of identification, I also gradually found that I learned more about the wonder and fun of spiders.
Let's talk about the new species I publish, each new species of spider I publish is equivalent to my child, and the favorite of them should be the pilot plate crab spider and the ant-inhabit crab spider.
The publication process of the pilot crab spider can be described as a twist and turn: as early as 2017, I had obtained this kind of specimen collected in Yunnan, but at that time, according to three Indian articles, I misclassified it as the eight-spotted crab spider (Platythomisus octomaculatus) and wrote it into the "Chinese Spider Ecology Atlas", and I did not delve into it.
After that, I came to the Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and after Teacher Li Shuqiang saw this, according to experience, it was determined that this cause was extremely far away from the origin of the model, and it should be a new species. However, due to the age of the eight-spotted crab spider and the lack of genital features, he said to help me borrow the landmark book of The neighboring model in Singapore.
In March of the same year, after reviewing the hard-borrowed specimen of the eight-spotted crab spider from Singapore, I concluded that the yunnan crab spider fruit should be a new species, and I began to write, during which I almost rejected the manuscript because of its too small morphological gap, but later research found that it and the eight-spotted crab spider had multiple stable differences in morphological comparison and molecular evidence, so it was finally identified as a new species by the reviewers.
The ant-dwelling crab spider is the world's first exact crab spider, which has been observed in the wild to inhabit the nest en masse, and the rest of the biological characteristics remain to be further observed. The habitat currently found in this new species is extremely small, only found in a wasteland within a few tens of square meters, which unfortunately has been reclaimed, so the new species may have become extinct by the time of publication.
Because There is no naturalistic foundation in China, many rare and exotic new species in the early days were published by foreigners, such as the national treasure giant panda, and the famous species of the Yangtze River, the white sturgeon. But it is not too late to make up for the dead sheep, and now the new species published by the Chinese every year are increasing year by year. According to the latest data from the famous taxonomic journal Zootaxa, Asia currently publishes 450 articles a year, of which more than 200 are new species in China. China is one of the few countries in the world with multiple terrains and landforms, and its species richness is extremely high. There are also many endemic species of spiders.
As a grassroots researcher, I have published 55 new spider species, but it is far from enough, the revolution has not yet succeeded, and comrades still need to work hard. I hope that in the future, through the joint efforts of me and industry colleagues, more new spider species can be published by the Chinese people, changing the current situation of China's weak taxonomic foundation.
Producer: Popular Science Central Kitchen
Producer: Beijing Science and Technology News | Science plus client
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