Spider Silk, Return of a Locally Extinct Species...

The October 18th show was part 2 of the show before that and featured a study on tarantulas producing silk from their feet and not just their spinnarets. It is not known (yet) if other spiders do this; if it turns out that they do, then which came first - the spinnaret silk or the foot silk?- will have implications for the evolutionary biology of spiders.


Meanwhile in Britain, the Large Blue Butterfly which was extirpated in the UK has been successfully reintroduced, by putting habitats back to the way they used to be - able to support the Myrmica sabuletti, a special species of red ant whose nests play host to the butterfly's caterpillars. The caterpillars feed on the ant larvae and pupas. The large Blue can't survive without this other insect, which requires a certain sort of habitat.