When Tarantula Venom Comes from a Misnamed Spider: The Importance of Taxonomic Accuracy in Theraphosid Toxinology

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  When Tarantula Venom Comes from a Misnamed Spider: The Importance of Taxonomic Accuracy in Theraphosid Toxinology I am very happy to share my most recent publication in Toxicon. This is a particularly meaningful publication for me because it brings together two areas that have become an important part of my work and personal interests: tarantulas and toxinology. At first glance, taxonomy and venom research may seem like two very different fields. In reality, they are closely connected. Before we can properly study the venom of a spider, we need to know which spider we are actually studying. Why the Name Matters A scientific name is much more than a label attached to an animal. It connects that animal to everything we report about it, including its biology, distribution, behavior, venom, toxins, and even its potential medical importance. When a tarantula is incorrectly identified, or when an outdated name continues to be used without considering changes in taxonomy, the problem ca...

Stability of short-term boldness personality under nutritional and disturbance stress in a social spider

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By (c) @dineshphotography7797, some rights reserved (CC BY) - https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/245994740, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=147097695

Stability of short-term boldness personality under nutritional and disturbance stress in a social spider

Abstract

Background

Consistent among-individual differences in behaviours, also known as animal personalities, are ubiquitous across the animal kingdom. At the same time, the expression of these behaviours may remain context- and time- dependent. Social spiders lack morphological castes and apparent dominant hierarchies, but show consistent among-individual differences in behaviours such as boldness and aggression. Previous studies have shown that these personality traits are not associated with task participation and that personality repeatability weakens over longer durations. In this study, we tested whether short-term boldness was stable across intrinsic (nutritional state) and extrinsic (disturbance) contexts in the Indian social spider, Stegodyphus sarasinorum. We subjected individuals to feeding or starvation and repeated disturbance or no disturbance treatments, and measured boldness over three consecutive days.

Results

We found that neither variation in nutritional state nor disturbance influenced the mean boldness scores or their repeatability. Our results show that boldness is robust to short-term changes in hunger and disturbance.

Conclusion

The ecological and social functions of the boldness personality trait remain unresolved in social spiders and further studies are warranted to understand how exactly among-individual variation in boldness influences colony productivity and demographic outcomes.

Parthasarathy, B., Friedrich, K. & Schneider, J.M. Stability of short-term boldness personality under nutritional and disturbance stress in a social spider. Front Zool (2026). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12983-026-00612-7