However, co-author Ashirwad Tripathy kept sending pictures of spiders from the region to his colleague for identification.
“When he shared this image from the underside of a Daphniphyllum leaf, I froze in shock because I had seen the Hawaiian spider during my master’s programme itself, and I knew instantly we had a jackpot because of its striking resemblance,” said Dr Priyadarshini.
Since then the scientists have identified 32 different colour variations, or “morphs”, of the new species collected from three locations in Uttarakhand, India.