New Insight Into the Evolutionary Arms Race Between Spider Egg Sac Pseudoparasitoids and Active Maternal Care by the Spiders

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  New Insight Into the Evolutionary Arms Race Between Spider Egg Sac Pseudoparasitoids and Active Maternal Care by the Spiders ABSTRACT Pseudoparasitoids can lead to high mortality in spider egg sacs, and in some cases, they reduce the reproductive success of a spider female to zero. On the other hand, a species that develops within the spider's egg sac uses a limited resource derived from a single egg sac for its larval development. Therefore, the most crucial behaviour that increases the fitness of free-living pseudoparasitoid females is choosing the best host for their offspring. We analysed various points of the counter-adaptations of the spider egg sac pseudoparasitoid and spiders exhibiting active maternal care, utilising the ichneumonid  Hidryta fusiventris  (Thomson, 1873) and the wolf spider  Pardosa lugubris  (Walckenaer, 1802). We showed that the oviposition decision of  H. fusiventris  is based on the spider's egg sac size and that the fema...

(How to) Make Paris' Arachnids collections great again?

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(How to) Make Paris' Arachnids collections great again?

The French Natural History Museum’s arachnid collection is one of the world’s largest. It includes a total of about 3 million specimens from the twelve orders of arachnids: spiders (2 million specimens), scorpions (10,000), parasitiforms and acariforms (together as acari, 30,000), pseudoscorpions (7,000), opilions (4,500), amblypygi, palpigradi, ricinulei, schizomids, solifugae and uropygi (altogether 1,200), from all over the world. The biggest collection is the one of spiders, which was started in the 1860s by Eugène Simon (1848-1924), an araneologist who is still considered one of the most prolific spider descriptors today and has grown considerably over the years. It includes 26,000 species, out of the 53,000 described to date, and some 12,000 types. Despite its historical and scientific importance, the Natural History Museum arachnid collection has suffered over the years. Conservation issues like dehydration, slides conservation, label degradations or mold development are to be faced in the collection. Furthermore, the arachnid collection has not undergone the technological and cultural transformation other natural history collections may have. The specimens’ catalogs are not yet computerized and types not identified nor individualized. Therefore, and even if the Natural History Muséum of Paris has embraced and implemented a culture of data sharing, its arachnid collection is not visible enough nor easily accessible to potential users. Here I detail the state of Paris’ collection today, the major challenges we are facing, and the projects we are developing to preserve, valorize and make it accessible to researchers worldwide.

The Museum’s collections of Arachnida are among the largest of their kind in the world. The term Arachnida covers the following groups: Acari, Amblypygi, Araneae (spiders), Opiliones (harvestmen), Palpigradi, Pseudoscorpiones, Ricinulei, Schizomida, Scorpiones, Solifugae and Thelyphonida.

Privet, Kaïna & Elise, Leguin. (2025). (How to) Make Paris' Arachnids collections great again?. 10.13140/RG.2.2.33155.57124.