‘It seems that size really does matter’: Males of 4 never-before-seen tarantula species have record-long genitalia
Scientists had to create a kind of completely new spider after four new tarantula The species had genitals so long that they could not enter any preexisting category.
The team thinks that men have evolved this impressive appendage to keep themselves as far from aggressive women, who are known to eat their partners during mating.
The genitals of male tarantules are generally 1.5 to twice the length of their head and the assembled thorax. But the new palps of spiders – specialized appendages to transfer sperm during mating – are four times longer than their upper body and almost half as long as their longer legs, according to a new study.
“The males of these spiders have the longest palps among all the known tarentules”, the main author of the study Alireza ZamaniAn arachnologist at the University of Turku in Finland, said in a statement. “Based on the morphological and molecular data, they are so distinct from their closest parents that we had to establish a whole new genre to classify them, and we named it Satyrex. “”
The name Satyrex is a combination of the words “satyr” and “rex”. In Greek mythology, a satyr is a male spirit with the upper body of a human and the lower body of a goat or a horse, and “rex” is the Latin word for the king. According to the declaration, satyrs are often represented as having exceptionally large genitals.
The new Tarentulas live in burrows and fresh spaces between the rocks of the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa. Zamani and his colleagues met for the first time Satyrex arabicus In Saudi Arabia, photographed Satyrex Ferox in Yemen and Oman, and describes Satyrex somalicus And Satyrex speciosus in Somaliland. They published their conclusions on July 22 in the journal Zookeys.
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Of the four new species, S. Ferox Stands out as the biggest and fiercest, hence its name. Males and women have leg spans of about 5.5 inches (14 centimeters), and the male palps extend an incredible 2 inches (5 cm) long, possibly to provide a safety pad against cannibal women during mating.
“We have temporarily suggested that the long palps could allow the male to keep a safer distance during mating and help him avoid being attacked and devoured by the very aggressive woman,” said Zamani.
The species is also very defensive. “At the slightest disturbance, he lifts his front legs in a threatening posture and produced a noisy whistling by rubbing specialized hair on the basal segments of the legs before the other,” said Zamani.
Molecular and phylogenetic analyzes, where scientists reconstruct the evolutionary history of a species by genetics, revealed that a tare previously assigned to gender Monocentropus is actually more closely linked to Satyrex spiders too. Researchers first described LONGIMANUS monocentropus of Yemen in 1903, but the spider has now been reclassified as Satyrex long.
“The much longer palpes of S. LONGIMANUS And the four newly described species were among the main characters who led us to establish a new genre for these spiders, rather than place them in Monocentropus“Zamani said.” At least in Tarantula’s taxonomy, it seems that size is really important. “”
