Biology

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/21700185

The article is short so I recommend reading it. I started adding the key points below, but ended up including almost the entire article:

Number 16 (c. 1974 – 2016), also known as #16, was a wild female trapdoor spider (Gaius villosus, family Idiopidae) that lived in North Bungulla Reserve near Tammin, Western Australia. She lived an estimated 43 years and became the longest-lived spider on record, beating a 28-year-old tarantula who previously held the title. When Number 16 finally died in 2016, it was not of old age but from a parasitic wasp sting.

On March 1974, Australian arachnologist Barbara York Main began a long-term study of spider families. [...] Main returned to the site annually, sometimes more frequently, for more than four decades.

Like other trapdoor spiders, Number 16 spent her entire life in the same burrow, subsisting off the edible insects that walked on her burrow's trapdoor-like silk roof.

For her 40th birthday, research assistant Leanda Mason wanted to give the spider a mealworm, but Main denied the request since it would interfere with the study

Because of Number 16, Main's project took far longer than she had expected. She continued to work into her late 80s, but she "began to look forward to the project's end," The Washington Post reported. Finally, when Main's own health declined before the spider's, she passed the project on to Leanda Mason.

On 31 October 2016, researcher Leanda Mason discovered Number 16's burrow in disrepair. The spider was gone. Evidence suggested she was killed by a parasitic spider wasp

“She was cut down in her prime [...] It took a while to sink in, to be honest," said Mason

After retiring, Barbara York Main moved to a care facility for Alzheimer's. Leanda Mason, who kept in contact with her mentor, said in 2018 that Barbara "remembers No. 16" but "forgets that she’s died."

New paper from Ikeda et al. on the biogenesis of chitin bristles in the annelid #Platynereis with nice #vEM reconstructions and a chitin synthase knockout.
Bristles are formed in a process of biological 3D printing. @biology
#microscopy
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48044-3

Six stories of parthenogenesis:

• Rays
• Sharks
• California Condors
• Honeybees
• Whiptail lizards
• Amazon Mollies

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/20257123

From this article: https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/04/swimming-and-spinning-aquatic-spiders-use-slick-survival-strategies/

Still time to sign up to our COS Symposium 2024

"Life in Context: Organismal sensing and adaptation in the natural environment"

in Heidelberg July 22-23, 2024.

Free registration.

https://www.cos.uni-heidelberg.de/en/centre-for-organismal-studies-heidelberg/scientific-events-at-cos/cos-symposia/cos-symposium-2024

with @vincentflora, @NicoleDubilier, @GonzalezLab and many other great speakers

@biology #Evolution

Beautiful new study by Michael Bok, Macali & Garm on the high-resolution eyes of the enigmatic alciopid annelids, from Ponza island.
"Our results show that the eyes of alciopids possess the anatomical, morphological, and physiological properties requisite for high resolution tasks and object vision"
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2024.02.055
#annelid #Evolution #eye @biology @mikebok

We have now published a new and massively extended/reworked preprint of the whole-body #Platynereis larval #connectome with over 50 figures

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.17.585258v1

All the analyses, plots and figures should be reproducible in #rstats with the code provided:

https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10825370

@zenodo_org

by querying our public #CATMAID database:

https://catmaid.jekelylab.ex.ac.uk

#neuroscience @biology #volumeEM
@biorxivpreprint

Press release at @eLife of our paper exploring the mechanism of pressure sensing by UV light sensors in #Platynereis larvae

https://elifesciences.org/for-the-press/5f58b93c/plankton-use-uv-light-sensors-to-detect-pressure-change-and-avoid-getting-swept-away

Luis Alberto Bezares Calderón et al. paper here:
https://elifesciences.org/reviewed-preprints/94306

#neuroscience #cilia #zooplankton #science @biology

(sans paywall courtesy of the only reason I have a bluesky account)