Grand Challenges in Arachnid Toxinology and Biochemistry
Venom usage within arachnids is limited to spiders, scorpions, pseudoscorpions, ticks, and maybe even camel spiders if the toxic secretion from their epidermal glands is considered as venom (Aruchami and Sundara Rajulu, 1978;von Reumont et al., 2014). Among the venomous arachnids, spiders and scorpions have received by far the most attention from researchers (von Reumont et al., 2014). Overall, venomous arachnids comprise around 60,000 described extant species, with many more species yet to be characterised (Rein, 2023;World Arachnid Catalog, 2023). Venomous arachnids use their venoms mainly for prey capture and defense (Simone and van der Meijden, 2021;Lüddecke et al., 2022), although some spiders and scorpions use their venom coercively for courtship (males making females more compliant by "sexual bites or stings"; (Sentenska et al., 2020;Olguin-Perez et al., 2021)) and ticks employ venom to facilitate their parasitic lifestyle (Cabezas-Cruz and Valdes, 2014). Arachnid venoms are complex mixtures of metabolites, peptides, proteins and enzymes containing hundreds or even thousands of individual components for each species (Pineda et al., 2020). While arachnids employ these components to provide them with an evolutionary advantage in their respective ecological niche, researchers have realised that the astounding diversity of arachnid venom components can be utilised for the benefit of humanity. For example, applications as therapeutics, bioinsecticides, antiparasitic treatments or for diagnostic purposes are being actively pursued. I therefore hope the realisation that arachnids could be beneficial for humans will eventually change their mostly negative public perception as being repulsive and potentially deadly. In the following paragraphs, I will discuss some ongoing and future challenges for toxinological and biochemical research on arachnids which also provides an opportunity to further expand our knowledge on these exciting creatures.
