Noninvasive genetic sampling enables biomonitoring without the need to directly observe or disturb target organisms. This paper describes a novel and promising source of noninvasive spider and insect DNA from spider webs. Using black widow spiders (Latrodectus spp.) fed with house crickets (Acheta domesticus), we successfully extracted, amplified, and sequenced mitochondrial DNA from spider web...

Spider silk fibers have impressive mechanical properties and are primarily composed of highly repetitive structural proteins (termed spidroins) encoded by a single gene family. Most characterized spidroin genes are incompletely known because of their extreme size (typically >9 kb) and repetitiveness, limiting understanding of the evolutionary processes that gave rise to their unusual gene archi...

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...

Experiments tested the ability of newly emerged spiderlings of a black widow spider, Latrodectus hesperus Chamberlin & Ivie (Araneae: Theridiidae), to crawl through brass screen of various mesh size. The purpose was to determine whether immatures of these medically important spiders could be excluded from buildings. In horizontal orientation, black widow spiderlings were able to easily pass thr...

tarantulas have recently become as pets in most parts of the world that increased the probability of encountering emergency physicians with patients hurt with these spiders. their attacks usually do not cause general manifestation, however there are some case reports in this regard. here, a 40-year-old man was reported who was referred to the emergency department with severe periumbilical pain ...