{"id":260557,"date":"2025-10-30T10:06:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T10:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/260557\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T10:06:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T10:06:10","slug":"uc-davis-researchers-discover-new-species-of-coastal-spider-just-in-time-for-halloween","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/260557\/","title":{"rendered":"UC Davis Researchers Discover New Species of Coastal Spider, Just in Time for Halloween"},"content":{"rendered":"

Previously, these spiders \u2014 brown, cute and around the size of a quarter \u2014 were thought to be Aptostichus simus, a close relative and lookalike. Researchers suspected they might be distinct, so they analyzed genetic material to distinguish between the two species.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew that these lineages across the coast of California were really different from each other and had been separated for a very long time,\u201d said Jochim, a researcher in the Department of Entomology and Nematology at UC Davis.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Emma Jochim does field work in the dunes at Stinson Beach (Courtesy of Emma Jochim\/UC Davis)<\/p>\n

The species share similar life histories and ecological roles \u2014 preying on arthropods like beetles in coastal dunes \u2014 but they don\u2019t interbreed, partly because they rarely move far from their burrows.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe females never leave their burrows, only the males do,\u201d Jochim said.<\/p>\n

Partially because moving from one beach to another would be almost impossibly hard.<\/p>\n

\u201cEspecially because there\u2019s a lot of rocky coastline in between the different populations,\u201d Jochim said. The spiders can\u2019t live on the rocks, only in sandy dunes.<\/p>\n

To locate them, she looks for slopes covered in native plants. The spiders don\u2019t care for European beachgrass<\/a> or iceplant<\/a>, originally from South Africa.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe start digging at the bottom of the hill and as the sand falls down, the burrow \u2014 if it\u2019s present \u2014 will kind of flop over,\u201d Jochim said. \u201cIt looks like a sand-covered sock.\u201d<\/p>\n

These elusive spiders are related to tarantulas, which also make burrows. But trapdoor spiders take the engineering a step further, camouflaging the entrances to their burrows.<\/p>\n

The hinge of the door, Jochim explained, is made of silk. The door helps regulate temperature and humidity in the burrow.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt works opposite of what you would imagine a trap door to do,\u201d she said. \u201cPrey doesn\u2019t fall into the burrow from the door, but the spider lunges out from it to capture prey and then goes back in the burrow.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Previously, these spiders \u2014 brown, cute and around the size of a quarter \u2014 were thought to be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-260557","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}