Protect Species Podcast
This podcast is a production of the Global Center for Species Survival, which is a partnership between the Indianapolis Zoo and the International Union for Conservation of Nature Species Survival Commission (IUCN SSC). We record all episodes at the Indianapolis Zoo in the Bedel Financial Media Studio, made possible by a generous gift from Elaine and Eric Bedel.
Protect Species Podcast
Web of Life: How Spiders, Birds and More are all Connected
Renowned arachnologist and biology professor Dr. Mark Milne joins us to unravel the unexpected connections between spiders and birds. Ever wondered how hummingbirds use spider silk for nest-building, or how some South American spiders have turned the tables by preying on birds? Listen as Dr. Milne shares his fascinating journey from studying carnivorous plants to becoming a spider expert, punctuated by captivating encounters with these eight-legged creatures. We also spotlight the Joro spider's arrival in the United States, a new development capturing attention due to its impressive size and rapid spread.
Our conversation then shifts toward the excitement and urgency of discovering and conserving lost species. We recount the thrilling rediscovery of Fagilde's trapdoor spider in Portugal after nearly a century and the ongoing search for another elusive spider in Indiana. Learn how tools like pitfall traps and iNaturalist are instrumental in these discoveries and their vital role in conservation.
As we confront the challenges of climate change, habitat fragmentation, and invasive species, we find hope in the enthusiasm of young conservationists and a growing public awareness of biodiversity's significance. Tune in to explore practical steps for supporting spider populations and fostering a more biodiverse future.
Links:
The University of Indianapolis Spider Lab
Fagilde's Trapdoor Spider
What We Get Wrong When Talking About Spider "Bites"
Spiders are remarkable animals and I hope you already feel the same way, or that you'll at least gain a greater appreciation for them after listening to our conversation with Dr Mark Milne, a college professor, a world-renowned arachnologist and someone I'm fortunate to call a friend. Mark shares my passion for eight-legged creatures and he's here today with us at the Global Center for Species Survival to help us better understand them. I'm Sergio Henriquez, filling in for Moné.
Speaker 2:And I'm Sam Evande filling in for Justin. Welcome to the Protect Species podcast, where we celebrate biodiversity and converse with conservationists.
Speaker 1:Hey Sam, really great episode today. I'm really lucky to be surrounded by friends. It's great to be in this environment. Do you recall we're going to talk about spiders, one of my favorite topics in the world everyone's favorite topic, I feel. But do you recall any connection between spiders and birds, sam?
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, seju, but as an ornithologist, the first connection that comes to mind relates to the food web. So I'm talking about spiders as prey for birds. Well, but well, we can think about it this way Spiders and other inverts are really important for birds, and so maybe let's say, without spiders, birds will have a hard time finding food. But I can also think of a better connection between spiders and birds that I think you would like. That's a special connection between spiders and hummingbirds, where hummingbirds use spider silk to build and anchor their nests. That's a great one, don't you think?
Speaker 1:That's amazing. You're absolutely right, sam. You know, some of these hummingbirds just need they always need spiders. All hummingbirds build their nests with spiders, and without spiders there would be no much beloved hummingbirds.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I've also heard that some large spiders in South America may eat hummingbirds. Is that true?
Speaker 1:That is true. So, although spiders are indeed, like you said before, important components of birds' diets, sometimes the table is literally reversed. So the species you're thinking of are probably the so-called bird-eating tarantulas, and although they don't feed on birds that often as their name might entail, besides they're eating small invertebrates and insects. Mostly they will also eat birds and besides these, like active tarantulas, active hunting spiders some well-building spiders also get birds in their webs, similarly to how traps, you know, like spiders trap large insects, they can also trap small birds. But I actually did like your connection with the hummingbirds better, because I find it super interesting that without spiders we wouldn't have some of the birds we love the most.
Speaker 2:Well, I think, more reason for me to go to South America. I would really like to see both the beautiful birds, but also those really interesting spiders you talk about.
Speaker 1:I would love to go with you, sam, it would be amazing, those really interesting spiders you talk about. I would love to go with you, sam, it would be amazing. Hello, mark, welcome, and let's get to the hardest question out of the way first. Why spiders, mark? Who are you and what is it that you do for a living?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I'm a professor of biology at the University of Indianapolis and I teach conservation. I teach evolution, entomology and general biology and my specialty is spiders, but specifically conservation, taxonomy, systematics and ecology of spiders.
Speaker 2:Well, that's interesting and we are quite curious. So why spiders?
Speaker 3:So I actually started on carnivorous plants, and so carnivorous plants was interesting to me when I was an undergraduate student and I was working on an undergraduate project that dealt with learning how carnivorous plants grow and what nutrients they need to grow learning how carnivorous plants grow and what nutrients they need to grow and when I was studying carnivorous plants in the field as a senior in college, I would notice that I would see spiders crawling on these plants and building webs over the openings to these carnivorous plants, and I was like that is interesting.
Speaker 3:It seems like the spiders are stealing what the carnivorous plant should be eating. And so when I applied to grad school, some of the applications were like well, if you were accepted, what kind of project would you be studying? And I really had no idea. And so I thought of this idea that I saw in the field, I wrote it down and, lo and behold, I got accepted to grad school, and with that project and in order to complete that project, I had to know all the spiders that were visiting these plants, and so I soon became an expert on tiny spiders because usually they were pretty small that were visiting these plants.
Speaker 1:JOSE BORGETTA yeah, most people don't have problems, I think, with tiny spiders. When they grow beyond an inch I think or something. There's some like mythical measure there. People start to be less comfortable and part of the reason we asked you to join the Protect Species podcast today was to talk about the Joros spiders, which isn't that big really, but it isn't that small, and they're not native to the US, but they've been in the news recently and what do you think that is? Why do you think they've been in the news?
Speaker 3:Oh, the Joros spider is a recent introduction into the United States and so around 2014 or so, we saw our first Jor-El spiders in the US. They probably came in a year or two before that, but the Jor-El spider, as you've mentioned, is a relatively large spider. I mean, the females can get up to two inches or so in length, maybe even larger if you include the lengths. And the drone spider is something that people are not going to miss. It is a rather large critter and it's similar to well, it is a golden silk-weaving spider, just like some of the relatives we actually have in Florida, but this one is expanding and spreading across the US, so that's why it's in the news lately.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So Sergio recently traveled to Japan for work and he saw a lot of Joro spiders in their native range. They seem to be hardy species. Is that true of most spiders? Do they adapt well?
Speaker 3:That's an interesting question. That really depends on which spiders you're talking about. A lot of spiders are cosmopolitan and they can live where humans live, and they're synanthropic, which means they like living with people and they are very adaptable. But other spiders have specialties to specific habitats and specific environments. For example, I study a lot of spiders that are wetland specialists, and when you get out of wetlands, these spiders basically disappear. We don't see them at all and, as we know, wetlands are disappearing in the US and around the world and these spiders and everything that lives in these wetlands are disappearing along with it. So some spiders have that ability to adapt well and others do not, and I think that's true for most taxa in the world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for most species, I think, have similar patterns. So you know, in Japan the Joro spider is a common fixture of life. They exist in people's houses, backyards, gardens, in the streets, I mean they're everywhere. They're one of the most common, if not the most common, in the southern islands.
Speaker 3:But why do you think the people here are fixated with the non-native species in the U? S? I think a lot of that has to do with the media coverage. You know, the media sort of stokes this uh fear of these spiders because it sells. You know, fear is what it's going to sell and so because of that, a lot of the publications focus on um, this giant spider spreading across the U? S, and a lot of them even say this flying spider that's spreading across the US because it happens to balloon, which is a property that a lot of small spiders have.
Speaker 3:The drill spider is not small, but when it is young it is small and so it balloons when it is small, and ballooning is basically just putting out a little thread of silk and then flying on the wind and the electromagnetic currents and then flying somewhere and landing and building your web somewhere else and so flying. I don't know if we I guess it is flying, but in the sense that that has wings and the spider is flying around. Obviously that's not the case. But when you say flying spider in a headline, you know it attracts attention. Flying spider in a headline, you know it attracts attention. And so I think the media and the headlines have really stoked an interest in this quote unquote flying large giant spider. And people are naturally, I think, already have a distaste for spiders and we combine those things it's hard to resist looking at.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know you work on fairly small spiders yourself and you mentioned the electromagnetic field, which is something people might not just start just saying it naturally. It's something spiders fly and then they fly in the electromagnetic field. I would assume they would use wings, but of course maybe not so.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right, yeah, so some of their silk could be picked up. So everyone thought it was just the wind that was carrying the silk on the spider along with it, but apparently electrostatic forces also play a role in carrying these spiders in the air to different places. And yeah, so usually it's tiny, tiny spiders or immature spiders at less I wouldn't say less maybe approximately one to two millimeters in length, so very small, because anything bigger than that is too heavy.
Speaker 2:There are a handful of other spiders that have attracted a lot of media attention. It tends to be negative, for example the black widow, brown recluse spiders, but some have attracted positive attention as well, like the jumping and peacock spiders. How does their attention impact the animals?
Speaker 3:Yeah, positive attention is always well, not always, but often good for spiders because it puts them in a rare good light and, as you said, most spiders are seen with a little bit of disgust by most of the public.
Speaker 3:There's been a recent movement as a lot of people are taking jumping spiders as pets recently and they're putting them in little cages and giving them names and watching them live for their short lifespan of a year or two.
Speaker 3:And so you know, I think it's good in some ways because people are seeing spiders in a positive light and less likely to kill them and more likely to feel like they deserve to be conserved. But, you know, sometimes this can go a little too far where, if a spider is overly loved, you can have poaching and you can have people taking spiders from the wild when they should not be taken. I know Sergio does a lot of work on this when it comes to poaching and over-harvesting of spiders and that can be a large concern, largely in tropical and subtropical regions where you have these large tarantulas and things like that, people want them as pets and they take them from the wild and the native populations drop. But I think in general, usually especially in North America having positive light on spiders is not something you see very often, but something we should definitely encourage.
Speaker 2:We've heard things like flying spiders, jumping spiders, any other interesting things that spiders do that we should.
Speaker 3:Oh gosh, how much time do we have. Spiders do lots of interesting things, amazing things. There are spiders that burrow into the ground and live their entire lives underground and almost never come to the surface. There are spiders that specialize on specific types of organisms and only eat that type of organism, like there's a spider that only eats pill bugs, like roly polies, and it only eats pill bugs and nothing else, and so it's pretty interesting. A lot of spiders have interesting diets. Some spiders don't build webs ever, and other spiders build beautiful webs. Some spiders can take webs and put them in their front claws and then wait for something to come along and then wrap themselves, wrap the web around this prey item and then eat it in a net. And some spiders have eyes that they regrow at night and then, when the sunlight comes at dawn, their entire retinas burn away, and they have to regrow their retinas every single night. And so I mean I could go on and on about how amazing spiders are.
Speaker 1:No, they are mind-blowing creatures. But you know, the reason I think most of these questions come up is because, for a lot of our listeners, I fear they will be afraid of spiders. Right, Most people are afraid of spiders, a lot of people. What would you like to say for any listener out there who is afraid of spiders but has the common sense to change their ways?
Speaker 3:I would say give spiders a chance, Just like any other organism that is completely afraid of you. Spiders are within that category. I would guarantee 100% of the time. If you put your finger up next to a spider, it will run away. Number one thing it will do is run away. Every single spider in North America will run away from you because they're afraid. They don't want to interact with something that's not a prey item and they recognize you as not prey. And so for us to be scared of them when their first reaction is to run for the hills, it seems just a little strange. But of course, most of this fear is illogical, and oftentimes the people who have arachnophobia realize that that fear is illogical, but they can't explain why they're afraid, but they are afraid. So trying to explain this logically usually fails, unfortunately. So I just say exposure is the best medicine.
Speaker 2:This podcast is a production of the Global Center for Species Survivor at the Indianapolis Zoo. We record all episodes in the Biddle Financial Media Studio, made possible by a generous gift from Elaine and Eric Biddle. You have described a few new species to science and contributed to spider distribution records here in Indiana, where the Global Center for Species Survival is located. We know discovery is a key element in science. What does it feel like to find and describe something for the first time?
Speaker 3:It feels great. It feels that feeling is why I do what I do. It's a great feeling to find something you're seeing for the first time and realizing that it's new, and also realizing that this discovery will allow this species to be known to the world and also, hopefully, to be conserved by other forces as well. So you know, as you guys well know, the first step in conservation is really naming a species. If you don't have a name to a species, it's extremely difficult to have any conservation action behind that, and so, in that way, taxonomy is intricately linked to conservation. One of the first steps is taxonomic description, and so knowing that I'm discovering something new and I'm putting this towards being protected is really a great feeling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if species discovery is something that would interest the people listening to this podcast, would you?
Speaker 3:encourage them to study spiders and other inverts. Yes, I always encourage my students and any members of the public to study spiders and inverts. But you know it doesn't take a scientist to appreciate spiders either or other inverts. You know it just takes somebody that's interested in knowing and learning about the world around them to really know or to really learn and appreciate the world. I think studying spiders and inverts is a great field for anybody wishing to be a scientist, because there are so many of them, the diversity is mind-blowing, and so if you study any inverts, you will never run out of subjects to study. And so if you study any inverts, you will never run out of subjects to study. That is absolutely true. While if you studied, say, mammals of some kind or another vertebrate, there are lots of species to study but not to discover, as in invertebrates.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Sergio recently rediscovered this species, the Fagil's trapdoor spider, after it was lost to science for more than 90 years. We understand you are trying to find a lost species here in Indiana. Can you tell us more about?
Speaker 3:that, yes, yeah. So Sergio's discovery was an amazing one. I was inspired by his discovery and realizing that searching for these lost species is not a futile effort. You know, we can rediscover them and they can be conserved. Basically, a lost species is one that hasn't been seen for many years In the realm of invertebrates we're talking at least 50, 60 years, where we haven't seen this species. Where it has been collected, has been photographed, has been videoed, there's been no documentation of it, and so the question in that case is is it still there or has it gone extinct? And, as you can imagine, when it comes to conservation, you really need to know if we should be conserving this species or if it's a futile effort because it doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 3:And so the species we're trying to locate again is Mermechiaffala flavipes, which is a trapdoor spider that the last time it was seen in Indiana was 1906. So we're talking almost 120 years ago that this spider was seen in. It was only seen in Indiana. It's endemic to the state in the southern part of the state, never seen again. It was found in a field. That's all the habitat information we have is in a field. So you know, any Hoosier would know there's lots of fields in southern Indiana, so there's a lot of places to look. But yeah, we haven't. You know, we've been looking for years. Now I've been looking for about five years. I've set pitfall traps and I've looked around in different ways no luck. Sergio has done that work with me. But yeah, we're continuing to look and continuing to search and trying to use some of the updated technology like iNaturalist to see if anybody's seen it and taking pictures and put it on iNaturalist. That really helps a lot of conservation efforts around the world too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you were mentioning, when we looked for the species, that you set up pitfall traps. And everyone kind of knows what a pitfall is, but maybe not in a technical sense. We mean it. So explain to us what is a pitfall.
Speaker 3:Sorry, yeah. So a pitfall trap is basically just a cup that's in the ground and the top of the cup is level with the ground. You fill that cup with a preservative of some kind and then you wait for however many days you'd like to wait usually about a week or two and then come back and hopefully see if you've caught anything.
Speaker 1:So just to make this clear so we have a cup which I'm assuming is a fairly small cup Well, I'm not assuming, because I know it's a really small cup and you have this field in Indiana and Southern Indiana, right, yes? Which is an area for those who don't know it's quite considerable, yes. And then we put this small cup which is a few inches across, and our hope is that, by some miracle of nature really, this spider just so happens to walk on top of that cup, fall on that cup and then retain and that's your best hope for this of that cup fall on that cup and then retain, and that's your best hope for this.
Speaker 3:I like how you accuse me it's very accusatory, but you've done this with me, sergio. No, no, but the idea is to increase your odds. Number one you put out not just one cup, but many, many cups. Number two you can increase the size of those cups. Number three you can put out little barriers, so little walls that extend out from the cups, so that if a crawling creature hits one of the barriers, it will crawl towards the cup. And then so you're basically increasing the range that this cup has and capturing any critter around it. And so when I set traps at the type locality, which is basically the location where this last, this critter was last seen 120 years ago, I put out many of these cups with many of these walls in the type locality and had them there for half a year and didn't find anything. But you know, I could be looking in the wrong location, the wrong habitat. It's very hard to know.
Speaker 1:I could be looking in the wrong location, the wrong habitat. It's very hard to know, yeah, when I was. Like you said, I do this all the time myself, so I just know. For people it might sound like such a small shot, and I want to be honest that it is. It is the key to winning the lottery, while being striken by lightning, because the odds of but, like you said, what we do is maximize our odds, the same way that most people do for other works, and we are. We do the best we can, and you mentioned quite a few times that we don't do this just because we like to put cups on the ground. We do it because of conservation, right, because while each species faces unique challenges, there are some major threats facing spiders as a whole, right? Do you want to talk to us a little about that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the you know threats to spiders are extensive, but of course, these threats are also the ones that are extensive against lots of other organisms in the world, because the thing that is threatening spiders, well, things that are threatening spiders are threatening their habitats, and of course, many of these species live in these habitats, not just spiders, and so we can think of things like habitat loss, which is probably the number one threat facing spiders. I mentioned the wetland spiders before, where you take away the wetland and those spiders basically disappear. Many species are like that as well. Right, the prairies across North America that used to extend across many, many states are 95%, 99% destroyed at this point, and so all those prairie species, including many spiders, are basically without a habitat and probably have their numbers highly reduced.
Speaker 3:We can also talk about climate change severely affecting spider numbers. There's been studies out of Europe that have shown that spider mortality increases by 50% with 1 degree Celsius increase in caves, and so if a spider lives in a cave and the temperature increases by 1 degree Celsius, half the population dies, and we already know that we're above 1.5 at this point, and so climate change is also going to have a very large impact. You know. That's not even talking about habitat fragmentation or invasive species or harvesting, all these other things that are affecting spiders. All these are threats.
Speaker 2:Yeah, If you're hearing about all of these challenges, it might sound daunting, but I'm sure there are some things that we can do, and even our listeners you know what can we do to support the conservation of spiders and other small creatures.
Speaker 3:That's a great question, and I think the number one thing that most people can do is build a habitat that can support spiders, and so a lot of people have lawns in their yard not everybody, but a lot of people have lawns and if you can turn that lawn, or at least a part of that lawn, into, for example, native plant habitat, native plant habitats are going to mimic the habitats that most native species in North America have evolved to live in and are adapted to, and so if you recreate that habitat, rather than the grassy lawn that you have at the moment, you can create a habitat that harbors a lot of biodiversity.
Speaker 3:You know multiple times the amount of biodiversity that you have in just a grass lawn the amount of biodiversity that you have in just a grass lawn. So this is the idea here, and there are books on this I'm forgetting the name of these books, but there are books on this to say that this is one of the best things that the public can do for conservation is to have a lawn that has native plants and biodiversity, and if we have enough people doing this, we then have places where species can live and hopefully reproduce, and this will help buffer these populations against the threats that are ever expanding, unfortunately.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's one of those things that everyone can do. And if you have a very small patch of land in your house or in your neighbors or your neighborhood or you know, people can and should have an impact in their surroundings and I think that's a very positive and even if you are afraid of spiders, just to realize that those plants themselves have value and are beautiful native plants and, of course, butterflies will come and birds will come and, of course, bats will come. So, even if you don't like spiders, realize that spiders are just one component of a larger puzzle, absolutely and well. I was reading, of course, your biography in the University of Indianapolis website and I noticed it says there that your favorite thing about the school is that the students and their enthusiasm for science. Can you expand about that?
Speaker 3:Right, so, just like we're talking about the public and how they can help do things, can you expand about that, right? So, just like we're talking about the public and how they can help do things? You know, students, of course, can help as well, and not only becoming scientists and studying these things and pushing the boundaries of conservation, but at the same time, just being a somebody who likes to learn, somebody who likes to help, somebody who cares about the world around them and has empathy. Students in their passion for learning and understanding. This is something that drives me as a professor wanting to teach them more, wanting to get them out there and doing things that are positive for the world around us, and so a lot of my students care deeply about wanting to have a positive impact, and especially the biology students that I teach that positive impact takes the form of conservation and of environmental protection, and so you know, seeing that positivity and seeing that drive and that empathy really does push me to enjoy teaching these students.
Speaker 2:I mean, that must also give a lot of hope for the future. And is there anything more? You know that. You see, that gives you hope for the future where spiders are concerned.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, of all the interview questions I think that we've talked about today, you know this is the hardest one to answer for me. You know, this is literally the one that kept me up last night, thinking about optimism for the future. You know, as a conservationist, you have to have optimism, right? Without optimism, how can you do your job as a conservationist? Because, as you guys know, the work you do is trying to save these species and protect a lot of these species from declining. But you know, as we see, these threats that we're talking about and that we've mentioned are ever expanding, and so conservation itself is a multidisciplinary science, as you well know. But we can't do this alone, and so, without the help of politicians and the public, a lot of our efforts are handicapped.
Speaker 3:So, when it comes to optimism, sergio is the eternal optimist, and I love having him around because he always pushes me up from my depths of pessimism to make me realize that there is hope in the world. And so, yes, there is hope, because, when we look at this as a historical perspective over the last few hundred years, you know, the amount of destruction that we're having today is much less than what we had in the past. Right, the amount of destruction has decreased. Right, climate change is increasing, but some of the direct threats that are caused by humans, some of those are going down. The awareness about conservation, the importance of biodiversity, is increasing. It is becoming a topic that is talked about in the public eye by politicians, by administration, in the government, of both federal level, state level and local level. So it's becoming more aware that this is a topic that people are concerned about. So, yes, there is hope in that and there is hope that people can do something to push this forward.
Speaker 1:Well, one of the things that helps me keep optimism that I find is important is that Tell us your secret, Sergio.
Speaker 1:Well there is. Sadly, there is no secret sauce, but one of the things that I do that I'm very fortunate to do with you, mark, and, of course, when I'm out in the field looking at birds with Sam is that we love what we do. We are passionate. That's why we care, but we have fun doing it. So I know we have not enough time, we don't have enough hours in the day as well, but do you have any?
Speaker 3:fun stories about your work with spiders or at the university you would like to share with our listeners that come to mind?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you know, spiders are, as we said, basically everywhere, and so one of the things I study are cave spiders, and some of the cave spiders that I study are in very hidden relictural habitats, habitats that are basically left over from a long time ago and nobody's gone into since.
Speaker 3:One of the greatest presentations that I've given at a conference is where I showed videos of me going into caves that are nothing but a small hole in the ground and you have to tuck all your your arms. You have to tuck your arms in and become basically a tube and then dive down into this hole and then it opens up into a large cavern where, you see, you know, basically nobody's been in there for possibly hundreds of years and you're discovering these new organisms or these organs that haven't been seen in so long. And we discovered, uh, new species in these caves, but the but the act of going into a tube like that in the ground gives people the heebie-jeebies, and understandably so, because you don't know what's down there really and who knows if you're going to be able to get out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's like a mixture of these kind of heebie-jeebies, like you said, and the feeling of discovery and awe that you feel when you go in. So I've been into spaces where no person has ever been before. We were the one, you know, clearing the way so that a person can even fit there. So I know exactly what you mean by tucking your arms. I have a similar case where the tube itself, as you describe it, was where the spiders lived. So I was with my arms tucked away next to me and the spider was above my head. So I had to push the tube into my mouth and my mouth was where I held it, so that with one hand I could push the spider to collect it.
Speaker 1:So the space in these things is sometimes, but, like you say, just the fact that you know you're the first person probably to ever seen this creature and the spaces are beautiful, if you have never explored Indiana caves or caves elsewhere. When they are well cared, pristine even, yeah, I mean, the geological beauty of the space is just yeah, and I would argue that's a good example of a fun story.
Speaker 2:So, as we wrap up now, just interested and curious to hear. So what are you working on now? Yeah, I have several studies wrap up now. Just interested and curious to hear. So what are you working on now?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I have several studies going on now, but one of the ones I wanted to highlight is we mentioned lost species, and so there is a lost species that is sort of my white whale. I've been looking for this spider for the past seven or eight years, with no luck. For the past seven or eight years, with no luck. It is a small spider, as I work on, maybe about two millimeters in size and it is Goniataura eunestes, and it is not from some tropical location in the Amazon, but from Southern Virginia, and it was found in Southern Virginia in 1921, and it hasn't been seen since, and so over 100 years. And I have a theory.
Speaker 3:I think that it is a prairie spider. So it used to live in the Piedmont Prairie, which used to stretch North Carolina Virginia all throughout this region, and that prairie is mostly destroyed now, mostly by agriculture and suburban development. And so, like we said before, as this habitat disappears, the spider disappears with it, and so this fall I'm going to go down to North Carolina, virginia, visit some remnant prairies that have been protected by conservation organizations like land trusts, and I'm going to try to collect this spider that hasn't been seen in over a hundred years and hopefully re-describe it in a paper, so I have my fingers crossed for that.
Speaker 1:No, that's a challenge accepted. I appreciate your invitation.
Speaker 1:I'm looking forward to join you as well in that and to go and find the species we haven't seen in a hundred years. I'd love to have you along, sergio. I would love to go, mark, it's great. Well, thank you so much for your time and for everything you shared with us today. I hope the listeners just value and have a notion of how great it is. You're one of my heroes. It's just really great that I can even call you a friend. It's amazing to have you here today and it's been fun. Of course, if there's any mentions of a website or organizations, we'll share those in social media. Anything you want us to share with our listeners, we will, and I'm looking forward to talking to you after this, of course, and hopefully next time as well, with you, sam.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much, Mark, and good luck with the search. Thanks, thanks, guys. Thank you, mark the search.
Speaker 1:Thanks, thanks guys. Thank you, mark. Don't forget to subscribe to the Protect Species podcast to ensure you're the first to know when new episodes are available. Also, please follow us on social media. We are on Facebook, instagram and X. Also, if you like what you hear, we'd love if you left us a review which makes us more popular and helps other people find us.
