An Odonate Researcher from Sri Lanka Photographs a Spider While Looking for Birds in Malaysia - Observation of the Week, 7/21/19

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Our Observation of the Week is this Gasteracantha diardi spider, seen in Malaysia by @amila_sumanapala!

Amila Sumanapala first delved into bird watching when he was thirteen years of age and was growing up in Sri Lanka. “By late teens my interest had broadened to include a wide range of faunal taxa,” he says, “[and] I joined several volunteer nature organizations in the country such as the Field Ornithology Group of Sri Lanka, Young Biologists' Association of Sri Lanka and Butterfly Conservation Society of Sri Lanka and developed my capacity to become a researcher and a conservationist.” He is now a postgraduate researcher at the University of Colombo.

It was his original interest in birds that brought Amila and some friends to Malaysia, where they attended the Fraser's Hill International Bird Race. “My friend Kasun first observed the spider and showed it to me,” he recalls. “We recognized it to be a Gasteracantha species but it was different from what we have observed previously. So we photographed it hoping that we would be able to identify it later and we could do that thanks to INaturalist.”

Also known as spiny orbweavers, memebers of the genus Gasteracantha are found around the world as far north as the Korean Peninsula all the way to the southern tip of Africa. Gasteracantha diardi range through much of the islands of southeast Asia, and like other members of their genus, only the females are large and have spiked abdomens. Despite their diminutive size, Gasteracantha spiders spin quite large orb webs, and they decorate them with tufts of silk. It is presumed these tufts make the web easier for birds and other large animals to see and thus avoid, saving the spider from the onerous task of fixing a damaged web.

While Amila photographed a spider while on a trip where he looked for birds, his main area of interest is actually Odonata, or the dragonflies and damselflies. In about 2009 he developed an interest in them, and tells me 

Most of my colleagues at that time did not know much about odonates, thus I started observing them by myself and studying them in detail using the available literature. This has now become the main interest in my life as a biologist and I am conducting various research on their taxonomy, ecology and biogeography. I also authored a field guide to the dragonflies and damselflies of Sri Lanka in 2017. My postgraduate work is also on the damselflies of Sri Lanka.

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While he joined iNat in 2014, after hearing about it at the Student Conference in Conservation Science, Bangaluru, Amila (above, doing field work in Sri Lanka) says he’s only been using it regularly for about the last four months, “currently trying to document the insects I observe around the country using photographs and understanding their distribution patterns. 

I started using INat to get identification support on the insects and other invertebrates I observe and photograph during my field work and it has been a great support in my work thanks to all the identifiers in the community. This has motivated me to record more and more biodiversity every time I'm out in the field and share it on iNat. I also contribute as an identifier, especially for Odonata and other major insect groups observed in Sri Lanka and India.

- by Tony Iwane. Some quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and flow.


- Check out this array of Gasteracantha species!

- Here’s a photo of a male Gasteracantha cancriformis. Note the lack of spikes.

- You can watch a Gasteracantha spider finish her web here. Note the little tufts of silk on the spokes.

Publicado el julio 21, 2019 11:19 TARDE por tiwane tiwane

Comentarios

Great shot and story! We invite anyone with an interest in this wacky and fascinating group of orbweavers to join the Gasteracantha and Kin project: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/spiny-orbweavers-gasteracantha-and-kin

A team of reviewers has been able to identify more than 95 percent of the observations from this group on iNaturalist so far, from Gasteracantha cancriformis throughout the Americas (in all its diversity) to dozens of Gasteracantha species in tropical Africa, Asia, and Oceania. Relatives like Austracantha Christmas spiders in Australia, Isoxya box kite spiders in Africa, and Macracantha long-horned orbweavers from India to Borneo round out the group. We're even tracking down a couple of potentially undescribed taxa. All this and more here: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/spiny-orbweavers-gasteracantha-and-kin

Congrats @amila_sumanapala and thanks @tiwane!

Publicado por djringer hace más de 4 años

Great work and my heartiest congratulations....! @amila_sumanapala

Publicado por thilinahettiarachchi hace más de 4 años

Such a wonderful spider, @amila_sumanapala! I'm so happy to see Gasteracantha and related spiders getting the attention they deserve. Thank you for your hard work, @djringer and @michael-gasteracantha. #naturalwonders #tinytreasures 😊🕷

Publicado por tigerbb hace más de 4 años

Fabulous shot Amila!

Publicado por susanhewitt hace más de 4 años

In terms of identification many difficulties arise in the study of Gasteracantha species in consequence of the vagueness of diverse original descriptions and the different interpretations by subsequent authors. So let's try to discover the wonderful world of these spiders and clarify all that issues :-) Great picture :-)

Publicado por michael-gasteraca... hace más de 4 años

Very nice spider and photo! Reminds me of a water chestnut...

Publicado por mira_l_b hace más de 4 años

Great work..congratulations sir

Publicado por aniruddha_singham... hace más de 4 años

What a fun title.

Publicado por bobby23 hace más de 4 años

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