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...

Transcriptomic and Proteomic Study on Animal Venom: Looking Forward

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Image Credit: Luis A. Roque, Arácnido Taxonomy

Transcriptomic and Proteomic Study on Animal Venom: Looking Forward

Transcriptomic and proteomic studies concerning venom and venom glands have provided major breakthroughs in the characterization and knowledge of global crude venom compositions and have also allowed for the identification of new toxins and activities. Venom gland transcriptomes (mRNA) and proteomes (proteins) share a high degree of concordance regarding the major toxins produced, meaning the most heavily transcribed genes in the gland generally correspond to the most abundant proteins in the venom. These approaches are based heavily on specific techniques that allow for in-depth characterization and knowledge of global crude venom compositions like DNA sequencing and mass spectrometry, respectively. However, the transcriptome–proteome relationship is not perfectly linear, with studies often showing that venom gland transcriptomes contain a larger, more diverse array of “potential” toxin transcripts, while the proteome reflects only the “actual” translated products identified [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9].
Ho, P. L. (2026). Transcriptomic and Proteomic Study on Animal Venom: Looking Forward. Toxins, 18(5). https://doi.org/10.3390/toxins18050213