Six Months of Prompt Engineering: Building Scientific Altitudinal, Topographical, and Geological Visualizations for Spiders

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  Six Months of Prompt Engineering: Building Scientific Altitudinal, Topographical, and Geological Visualizations for Spiders By: Luis A. Roque,  Arácnido Taxonomy Six months ago, I set out on what seemed like a relatively straightforward goal: create better visual representations of where spiders live. What I quickly discovered was that producing scientifically meaningful ecological visualizations requires far more than simply asking artificial intelligence to draw a landscape. It requires learning how to communicate ecology, geology, geography, climate, and biodiversity in a language that AI can understand. Over the past six months, I have spent hundreds of hours developing, testing, refining, and rewriting prompts designed to generate publication-quality altitudinal, topographical, geological, and habitat-based visualizations for spiders, particularly tarantulas and other species whose distributions are closely tied to specific environmental conditions. What began as a curi...

Description of a new Andean species of widow spider (Araneae, Theridiidae, Latrodectus)

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Description of a new Andean species of widow spider (Araneae, Theridiidae, Latrodectus)

Abstract

We describe a new species of widow spider (Araneae, Theridiidae, Latrodectus) from the Andean region. DNA barcode sequences are provided. The species is documented from museum specimens across Peru and identified from photographs on iNaturalist, extending its inferred distribution into Ecuador, Bolivia, and Chile. We integrate specimen and citizen-science occurrences to generate a species distribution model using WorldClim bioclimatic variables, predicting highest suitability along temperate to high-elevation Andean regions. We discuss the utility and limitations of citizen-science imagery for delimiting and mapping species and summarize available information on clinical aspects of envenomation in Peru associated with the local “lucacha” widow spider.

Miller J, Kratzer CA, Griswold C (2026) Description of a new Andean species of widow spider (Araneae, Theridiidae, Latrodectus). ZooKeys 1281: 49-67. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1281.185973